


Batman and Son Rewrite

by fadesfanfic



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: and moderate descriptions of injuries, cw child abuse for damians backstory, cw for violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-02-16 02:25:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 31,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18682237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadesfanfic/pseuds/fadesfanfic
Summary: Damian Al Ghul has been dying to meet his father for as long as he can remember, and after defeating his mother in personal combat on his birthday, he's finally earned the right. But everything he does seems only to elicit his father's disapproval.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just rewriting Batman and Son but trying to make Damian's character more consistent to the Tomasi and Gleason version. Hence the incredibly boring fic title.

It’s the day after his tenth birthday, and Damian Al Ghul still feels sore all over.

It’s because of the fight with his mother, of course. The hardest fight he’s had in 10 years of training - but he still won. It felt like victory - even more so than the Year of Blood. 

He wants to ask her if she had to fight one of her parents - probably her father - on her birthdays during childhood. If she came out successful against the same obstacles. But the idea of his mother defeating his grandfather sits in his stomach wrong. After all, if his mother could defeat her father in personal combat, and he could defeat her, that would mean Ra’s Al Ghul, the Demon’s Head, was capable of being beaten by a ten-year-old.

Even though he’s currently dead - or missing, Damian’s unsure which he believes - that thought still feels vaguely blasphemous to him. His grandfather had been omnipresent throughout his childhood, either to supervise training, send out missions, or alternatively switch between a cold, calculating pride and a reminder that Damian owed his entire existence to him. 

The thought that he’s just gone like that makes his head spin. 

Damian idly picks at the stitches on his cheek, and his mother moves his hand down. “Stop fidgeting, Damian,” she says. Once she’s assured that he has, she steps back to her bags and begins to rummage through them. 

Damian sighs. He has his grandfather’s sword in one hand and his gloves with spiked knuckles in the other. Even though he’s all armed for combat, he doesn’t feel ready for it. 

And his mother  _ certainly _ doesn’t look ready for it. She comes back to him holding a small cylindrical container in her hand, a little larger than a large coin. It has a black lining and some type of soft earthy color in the middle.

“What is  _ that _ ?” Damian asks pointedly.

Mother reveals that the cylinder flips open and starts to rub her index finger in the interior of the thing. It appears that she’s picking up some type of very soft chalk around the color of her skin.

She smears the chalk on his cheek and it stings, but Damian doesn’t react. She does the same for the cut on his forehead. When Damian tries to reach his hand up to rub it off, she grabs him by the wrist to stop him.

Damian resists the temptation to stick his tongue out in disgust. Whatever she put on him has a heavy, uncomfortable feel, even if he discounted the stinging around his cuts. 

Damian holds up his grandfather’s sword to see what she did to his face. In his reflection, he looks uninjured - the cuts have been completely disguised by the skin-colored chalk.

“What’s the purpose of this?” he asks.

Mother shakes her head. “No purpose in particular,” she says, but she immediately starts doing the same to the cuts on her face.

Is she…  _ embarrassed _ ? Small flesh wounds aren’t really cause for embarrassment in the League. After all, you probably won the fight with a severe injury to your enemy - or their death. If all they could do was graze you, that’s a testament to  _ your  _ speed, to  _ your  _ cunning.

Damian wants to ask his mother how long it’s been since she saw his father. Maybe that will clarify some things. But she’s already explained everything to the best of her ability.

His father is a detective. A very good one, too. He’s also a warrior - he dressed to scare his enemy and strikes at them from the shadows - kind of like an assassin is supposed to. 

He hopes his father will approve of him if that’s the case. After all, that is how he fights. 

(Damian permits himself the brief fantasy of them fighting together against a common enemy, but knows that his father will probably send him out to work alone or with lackeys  - after all, even Mother didn’t accompany him on missions. Instead, he commanded his grandfather’s Shadows).

His father also goes by the alias Batman - which Damian knows he’s heard in the League a couple times, mostly when he wasn’t supposed to be listening. From what he’d  _ heard _ it seemed like his father was at odds with his grandfather. However, when he asked Mother this, she only said “It’s complicated.”

Damian had sniffed at that. Complicated indeed. As if he couldn’t understand complicated things.

The plane soon arrives at Gotham City, on the water. A car is already waiting for them when they get on the docks with a chauffeur inside. 

The chauffeur drives through Gotham with expertise. As Damian presses his face against the passenger window to see the scenery as they go by, he thinks he wouldn’t be able to do the drive better. Whatever the structure of this city is, it’s completely unfamiliar to him. Hordes of civilians stop at intersections, waiting for some light, yellow taxi cabs stop suddenly in front of busses, a type of elevated train chugs along over the streets on a railline. 

Completely unfamiliar. Damian eyes the gargoyles and grotesques hanging off some buildings and notes what a perfect place it would be to set up his sniper rifle, he scans alleyways fill with dumpsters and imagines sliding underneath them with a knife brandished, ready to take out the first target foolish enough to walk through them.

His father chose an excellent city for a battlefield. 

It isn’t much longer before the car turns out of the city and starts through some woods and meadows. Not entirely bad for training exercises, Damian thinks. 

Finally, the car starts to turn around a hill and the chauffeur parks near a waterfall. Mother grabs a handheld electronic device as she gets out of the car. Damian follows her and eyes it curiously. 

“A code-scrambler?” Damian asks. “We’re breaking in?”

Mother smiles slightly. “Well, I didn’t call and tell your father to expect us.”

Damian nods sharply. He doesn’t bother asking why. Maybe Mother wants to set him up against whatever defenses his father has. Maybe he’ll be impressed. 

Or, the thought hits him, maybe she didn’t call because he wouldn’t have answered. Maybe whatever happened earlier had been too bad and now he didn’t want anything to do with them.

Damian hopes it’s not that second one.

Damian scans the field in front of the waterfall as he walks forward. Mother is slightly behind him. She must want him to demonstrate some initiative.

His father wouldn’t leave his fortress undefended. It was one of the things Mother briefed him on on the way over. Father operated out of a cave attached to his manor, and an entrance through a waterfall was one way to get there.

So… there must be some security around here. Damian doesn’t see any at the first glance, or even the second, but on the third look-over he detects a flash of sunlight off the lens of a camera in the grass.

Damian frowns. He’s pretty sure they’re in range of the camera and have already been spotted, but he points it out to Mother anyway.

She nods sharply at him. “So do something about it,” she says.

Damian extracts a knife from his belt and throws it at the camera. It lands perfectly in the center of the lens. 

Damian smiles.

Damian bounds forwards. Now that the enemy - 

No, his father.

He’d slipped into assassin mode immediately when he started with the knife. Now that his  _ father  _ is definitely aware of his presence, time isn’t on his side.

He races to the wall of rock near the waterfall, scanning above him for traps of loose rock that might tumble on his head. He keeps his weight on the balls of his feet, ready to change direction in an instant.

The air behind him buzzes with electricity, and he jumps out of the way just in time as a shock strikes where he just was. 

Curious, it didn’t feel that strong. 

Despite the fact that it’s not his mission, Damian stops to investigate the false rock that nearly zapped him, carefully removing the metal spikes on his glove so that it will insulate instead of conduct electricity. 

 Prongs of a taser-like weapon are sticking out of the rock, but when Damian bashes it open to see its power source, it’s painfully aware the weapon was intended to be non-lethal.

Maybe to incapacitate his enemies, so that he can interrogate them at leisure? 

Damian keeps at least a foot of distance between himself and the rock wall as he continues inside. He looks over his shoulder to see if his mother is following him, and she is. She’s not approaching as cautiously as he did, though. Instead, she walks confidently through the field, as if daring someone to snipe her.

What’s going on here?

Mother reaches Damian as both of them are buffeted by the water of the waterfall. She activates her device but absolutely nothing happens. She sniffs slightly.

“He must have upgraded security since the last time,” she says.

The wall of the rock opens before them. Standing in front of them is his father - dressed in his bat uniform. He’s broad and muscular, like a boxer, but can’t be much taller than Mother - maybe even a little shorter. Damian unfortunately blurts out the first thing that comes to his head upon seeing this.

“Father,” he says. “I imagined you taller.”

“Father?” says Father. “Talia, what’s the meaning of this?”

Mother walks confidently past Father, as if they hadn’t just tried to invade his stronghold. She leans against a rock wall of a cavern.

And Damian - takes in the cavern.

It’s enormous. A multi-levelled cave with trophies from Father’s various victories, Damian presumes. A giant penny. A playing card. A series of cars that Damian can’t help but gasp at. Each one of them is sleek and black, with small detailing and metal panels that might hide weapons or tools. One of them has spoilers shaped like bat wings. Damian can’t tell whether it looks cool or ridiculous, but it certainly looks distinctive.

Further inside the cave, next to a series of computer terminals, is a man who has to be at least 60, probably 70. He’s balding with a combover, has a neat mustache, and is pressing one of the buttons on the computer console. The wall of the waterfall shuts behind Mother and him. 

“ - can’t honestly expect me to believe this, Talia - ” Father is saying as Damian takes in the room.

“Why not?”

“Because it would mean you  _ lied  _ to me! You said - ” Father glimpses at Damian and lowers his voice. Damian shuts his eyes to block out non-auditory stimulus and tries to listen even harder.

“You said you’d lost the child,” Father whispers. “And you didn’t.”

There’s a long silence on Mother’s end - or maybe she’s just better at whispering - and Damian suddenly feels intrusive and awkward. He swings his sword through the air, mostly to loosen up his muscles. 

Father walks up to Damian. Despite him being shorter than Damian had expected, he still towered over him. Damian was, after all, just 10. Not really much taller than 137 centimeters. 

Okay,  _ exactly  _ 137 centimeters, but whatever.

“What are you doing with a sword?” he asks, holding his hand out, presumably for Damian to give him the sword.

Nice try.

Damian tilts his head slightly up, attempting to look dignified. “Well, I  _ am  _ an expert swordsman.” 

It’s impossible to tell for sure with the mask, but Father looks skeptical. 

“He’s been dying to meet you,” Mother adds, as if she and Father weren’t just fighting. “I’ll leave you two to it.”

“You’re leaving?” Damian asks. He immediately regrets it. It sounds childish.

“I’m sure you want the power to make an impression without me,” Mother says. She looks at Father knowingly. “Wouldn’t you agree he deserves that opportunity?”

“Damn it, Talia - ” Father says. But Mother’s already pressed her device against the wall of the waterfall and this time it opens. 

So she was bluffing earlier? 

Either way, she slips out. Father makes a couple strides after her before he stops and looks at Damian. 

His mouth his pressed in a very thin line. He looks displeased. Damian feels himself get on the balls of his feet in preparation to fight. 

If he noticed, Father doesn’t react to it. “Give me the sword,” he says.

What is this even about? 

Does he not  _ believe _ Damian can use it?

Damian holds the sword out in a fighting position. 

“Don’t be stupid,” Father says. 

“I’m not  _ stupid _ ,” Damian says. He slashes towards Father with the sword.

He’s not putting a lot of force into it - he doesn’t  _ actually  _ want to hurt his father - but he’s still surprised when he connects. The sword scrapes across the kevlar lining of his father’s uniform.

Now, Father shifts back a little. Still, his stance is half hearted. Like he doesn’t actually want to fight.

Damian thrusts forward with the sword suddenly, this time with more force. Father steps to the side. He doesn’t bother with a retaliatory blow. 

Damian frowns. This is humiliating. There’s nothing wrong if the fight had ended quickly - but his father isn’t even deigning to hit him back!

“Show me respect and fight me!” he snaps, this time coming at Father with more than one strike - a kick aimed at his knee (Father shifts his weight so it clanks harmlessly into muscle) a knee to the kidneys (absorbed by kevlar) and a sword strike across the chest (blocked by his gauntlets, though Damian does feel the sword dig a little into his father’s arm). When Father is distracted with that, Damian allows himself the incredibly low blow of kneeing him in the groin.

Father exhales with pain and but recovers quickly enough to strike Damian’s sword arm - on the outside of his hand with one hand and the inside of his wrist with the other. Damian’s entire forearm rings as he drops the sword. He could try to hold onto it, but it’s obvious he’s not going to do much good with it right now. He instead prepares to reach for a knife, but Father grabs for his hand. He’s a little too slow - Damian does get his hand around the handle of his knife - but he lets it go. The less Father attacks him back, the more embarrassed he feels. Like this is just a childish outburst instead of him showing his father his skills.

“What’s your name?” Father asks.

Damian sighs and attempts to step back, but Father’s still got a good grip on his wrist. Damian knows the technique for exiting a wrist grab (at least against unprepared opponents) but doesn’t bother using it. What’s the point? This is what he wanted, right?

“Damian.”

Father nods. He releases Damian’s wrist, steps back, and takes off his cowl. Damian’s a little surprised at his appearance. He was expecting someone his mother’s age, but the slight lines around Father’s eyes indicate he’s probably at least forty. “I’m - I’m Bruce,” Father says a little haltingly, a little awkwardly.

“I think I’ll still call you Father,” Damian says. 

Father frowns at that, but doesn’t object. 

Now, the man with the combover comes up to Father. He stands by his side, and says “Shall I prepare the guest bedroom, Master Bruce?”

Father nods. “That would be nice, Alfred.” 

As the man - Alfred - leaves, Father says “That’s Alfred Pennyworth. He’s - ”

“Your servant?” Damian asks. “I’m familiar with etiquette around servants. We had a lot of them.” 

Father frowns again. It seems like that’s the only reaction Damian’s eliciting from him.

“He’s my  _ friend _ .” 

Damian doesn’t say anything, but it seems like your friend wouldn’t be the one preparing guest bedrooms for you. 

“Look,” Father says. He sighs and rubs his hand through his hair. Damian’s mostly struck by how  _ tired  _ he looks. “You can’t walk around the manor with a walking armory. You’ve got to disarm.”

Damian grits his teeth. Fine. He can disarm. He takes off his belt of knives and shurikens and removes his gloves with the spiked knuckles. He runs a mental inventory over the weapons he’d packed -

Oh. Pistol on the back of his belt. He hands it to Father.

Father eyes it skeptically. “What are you doing with all these weapons, Damian?” he asks. 

What kind of question is that? 

Damian leans forward a little to try to see whatever’s attached to that orange utility belt Father has, but he steps back.

“Are you saying you  _ don’t  _ have weapons?” he asks. 

Father carries Damian’s weapon to a safe. He barks his codename gruffly at the safe as he spins a combination on it. 

He doesn’t even put his body between Damian and the door to block his view of the combination. That could be good, if he thinks that Damian’s trustworthy enough to see it - or bad, if he thinks Damian is so incompetent he wouldn’t have spotted and memorized the combination. 

“ _ I’m _ not a child,” Father says.

Damian crosses his arms indignantly. “Neither am I!”

Father looks him up and down again. 

Damian clicks his tongue against his teeth. 

Father sighs heavily. He pulls a toolbox out from under a table and hands it to Damian.

“What’s this for?”

“For repairing the security features you destroyed,” Father says. 

Damian holds back a groan. He should have made his security features less destructible. 

He sighs as he eyes the tools in the box. It’s a menial job. Probably fit for him when he was no more than a child, before he’d ever gone on any missions -  _ real  _ missions, where people died.

But it’s probably a start. Father didn’t see any of his skills (Because he wouldn’t let him demonstrate them), so he’d need to know what he can do.

Damian takes the box diligently and leaves. As he’s leaving, he hears the hard  _ thwuck  _ of a fist slamming into rock - Father punching the side of the wall, he presumes.

He must not want him here at all.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce becomes concerned with his newly discovered son's strange behavior and the fact that Talia lied to him. Meanwhile, it looks like the kids aren't going to get along at all.

Batman punches the cave wall as hard as he can.

    Stupid. Despite the shock-absorbers in his gauntlets, he still felt the blow jolt up his arm. If he fractured something, he won’t be able to avoid another lecture from Alfred.

    Batman takes off his gauntlet to inspect the damage. He notes a dull pain as he pulls it off.

    Of course. The sword had gone through his gauntlet. He inspects his forearm.

    The armor was thick enough that it’s really just a cut. Probably doesn’t need much more than a bandage and antiseptic. But it still makes him frown.

    Damian had fought him long enough for him to analyze some of his skills. He definitely knew what he was doing, and League of Shadow instruction was evident in his fighting style - if only because of his speed and how ready he was to fight dirty.

    He’s hoping, as he goes over the fight, that all the boy ever did was train. He did seem hesitant in putting strength behind his attacks. Maybe to spare a sparring partner?

    He tries to figure out if that’s something that’d be _permitted_ at the League of Shadows. He should have asked Talia more questions before she left. Should have found out whether she raised him with the League, or just gave him the fighting skills.

    It wouldn’t be _so_ bad, he thinks, if it was just the ability to fight. He knows it's hard, and probably not the most healthy thing, but Dick was Robin when he wasn’t much older than Damian and he turned out alright - heck, better than alright. Better than he had any right to expect.

    He’s debating calling Dick, since he was always the social one. The one who actually knows how to read people. And now he’s working with kids - some part time gymnast instructor or something? - so that might help even more.

    But before any of that happens, he has to let Tim know to expect a kid in the cave when he comes back. He just doesn't know how to formulate it.

_Hello, Tim, you know my old nemeses?_

    No, that doesn’t sound right.

    _While you were gone, I picked you up a …_

He can’t think the words “younger brother” because he can’t really think of Damian as family. He literally just met him.

    When he was younger, when he and Talia were… together, and he knew she was expecting, he’d been mentally planning out exactly how _great_ things would be once the kid was born. He’d smother the kid with love and never let anything bad happen to them. They were practically ready to settle down and have a family, to the best of his recollection. They were _both_ devastated when she said she’d lost the child.

    And then she just _lied_ to him about it?

    He fell apart. He thought that she did to. She seemed too distraught to see him.

No one suggested trying again because no one could really get up the guts to suggest a “replacement”. Things just fizzled out on their own.

He wishes he’d asked her why she'd lied before she left. Was it duty? Was she annoyed or scared?

Scared of him or scared of her father?

“Father,” a voice cuts through the silence.

Batman turns and looks at the person who spoke. His son.

Damian’s got a smudge of oil on his forehead from fixing the equipment. Batman frowns. He hadn’t expected him to get it done that fast - or even at all, really. He needed some time to think.

Damian rubs his forehead a little and some color besides the oil comes off on the back of his sleeve. Batman steps over and inspects it. For his part, Damian seems to just let him. He’s looking up at him with watchful brown eyes.

“Foundation?” Batman asks, tapping Damian’s sleeve.

Damian shrugs. “I don’t know what it’s called. Mother rubbed it on my face this morning.”

Batman walks over to the cabinet Alfred keeps all his medical supplies and grabs a clean towel. He tries to wipe Damian’s face, but his son steps quickly out of arm's reach.

“I’m not a baby,” Damian says.

Batman tosses him the towel.

Damian sighs and rubs the foundation off.

It could have been worse. Batman had been expecting it to be hiding some really horrific injury. It just looks he has some small cuts on his forehead and cheek.

It’s nothing Dick hadn’t done, to hide bruises from teachers who weren’t aware of his vigilante lifestyle. But the fact that Talia felt the need to hide whatever was going on here from him makes him weary.

“Who did this to you?” Batman asks.

Damian sniffs. He tilts his head slightly back, like he’s trying to look down his nose at Batman, but he can’t because he’s a good head and a half shorter than him. “My mother,” he says in a tone indicating his father is stupid for asking.

Batman feels his hands clench in fists.

Damian’s weight shifts almost imperceptibly, but Batman can tell he’s getting ready to move. His knees are slightly bent, weight on the balls of his feet. Hands in loose fists.

Does he think he’s going to _attack_ him?

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Batman says, intentionally trying to pitch his voice softer. It’s hard.

It must have worked though, because Damian reacts - just not how he hoped. He raises an eyebrow and grimaces a little.

“I’m not expecting you to hurt me, Father,” Damian says. “And I don’t require you to use an… infantile voice when interacting with me.”

“Does your mother hurt you often?” Batman asks.

Damian clicks his teeth together. “First of all, it doesn’t even hurt, so you can’t say she hurt me. Secondly, these injuries were sustained in personal combat and I can proudly attest she fared worse than I.”

Batman frowns. He’s having a hard time imagining a ten-year-old who can beat Talia. He’s sparred her. She’s not a pushover.

“You don’t believe me,” Damian says in an accusatory tone.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Batman sighs. “Let’s just get inside,” he says.

“I can _prove_ it,” Damian says. He steps forward a little. “If you’ll give me a challenge. You wouldn’t fight me!”

“Of course I wouldn’t fight you - ”

A roar of a motorcycle cuts him off.

Oh, no.

He’d never gotten the chance to warn Tim.

Still in his Robin gear, Tim disembarks the motorcycle. He’s smiling for about all of two seconds before he sees Damian, when it wavers. Doesn’t completely disappear, though.

“Who’s this?” Tim asks.

Batman can tell he’s eyeing his cowl-less face - like _What the hell are you doing unmasked around strangers_ \- but doesn’t bother fixing it. The cat’s out of the bag, and he can’t really pretend to put it back.

Damian acts as if Tim hadn’t arrived at all. “You think it’s unfair because I’m a child?” he asks. “That’s _never_ been a factor in my training. I did everything the other Shadows did - but _better_!”

Tim or Damian first? Batman grimaces.

He might actually make some progress with Tim. He can’t see Damian dropping the “fight me” or personal combat part of the conversation.

“This is Damian,” he says. “He’ll be staying with us for a while.”

Tim offers a hand out to Damian. “Hi.”

Damian eyes him skeptically.

“On Earth, we call this a handshake -- ”

Damian scowls. “Who the hell is this, Father?”

Tim withdraws his hand. His head snaps towards Batman. “ ‘Father’ ?!”

Batman grimaces again. “This is, um - ”

“I’m his _son_ . He adopted me,” Tim says forcefully to Damian. Then to Batman, again and yet more incredulously: “ ‘ _Father’ ?!_ ”

Damian smirks. The smirk doesn’t look anything like Bruce or even Talia. It’s all haughty and a little bit cruel - 100 percent Ra’s Al Ghul. “Well, now that he knows _I’m_ alive, my father won’t be requiring your services as a replacement,” he says to Tim. He waves his hand in a dismissive motion.

Tim clenches his hand in a shaky fist and Batman steps between them before it can come to blows. Not like he thinks Tim would punch a ten-year-old - but still. With everything he’s gathered from Damian’s training, he’s not sure he wouldn’t take the body language as an invitation for a fight.

“Damian, that’s enough,” Batman says. “Tim has just as much of a right to be here as you do.”

Damian scoffs.

“Go inside.”

Damian turns on his heel and walks off like the whole thing was his idea in the first place.

“ ‘ _Father’_?!” Tim asks again. He grabs Batman’s shoulder. “I’m gone for a weekend and you’re already replacing me?”

“I am _not_ replacing you,” Batman says. “Talia showed up to the cave with the kid - what would you have me do?”

Tim shrugs it off. “ _Anything_ except letting him run around like the owns the place? Bruce just - is it even possible?”

Batman thinks for a moment. He’s already done the mental math. “He’s the right age for it to be possible,” he says. He doesn’t bother telling Tim anything else about what happened back then - it’d be pointless. “And even if he’s not my son - are you saying I _shouldn’t_ take him in? He was raised by the League of Shadows! He _deserves_ a good place to stay.”

“So let him earn it like everyone else!”

Batman purses his lips. He wants to ask Tim if he actually believes that’s something you need to earn, but Tim’s already spun around and gone back to his motorcycle. He takes off before Bruce can say anything.

Batman sighs. He’s pretty sure that out of all of the ways he could have managed this, he picked the absolute worst.

But at least no one punched each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you can't tell, I'm going with the Son of the Demon interpretation of Bruce and Talia's relationship, rather than the Morrison version.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damian gets settled down at Wayne Manor and continues getting along poorly with his father's other son. Meanwhile, his father seems to become increasingly concerned by his behavior.

The first thing Damian had done upon being unleashed on his father’s mansion was take an inventory of the defenses, entrances, and exits.

At first, the place appeared laughably undefended. Huge glass windows on all three floors? Get real. But a closer inspection revealed that the glass windows weren’t actually glass - merely some type of translucent material that seemed pretty resilient - at least, when tentatively rapped on them, they sounded all wrong, and he punched it with enough force to shatter normal glass, he only bruised his knuckles. 

He also notes that when he goes back to the exit to Father’s cavern, there’s a keypad hiding under the clock, preventing him from entering again. Certain other doors to the manor are also locked, though whether they’re with something more secure than a key is beyond Damian’s current observations. 

Eventually, he permits Father’s servant - Pennyworth was it? - to escort him to the guest room. Pennyworth only speaks when they arrive there.

“Your quarters, Master Damian,” he says.

Damian peeks inside. A large room with a twin bed and white sheets, not much else in there besides a fireplace and a nightstand. It will suit him fine.

“He’s going to be really glad to have you here,” Pennyworth says as Damian inspects the room. “Once he gets used to you.”

“I know that,” Damian says. 

“I heard you had an altercation with Master Tim today.”

Damian clicks his tongue against his teeth. Can it really be called an altercation if no one drew blood?

“Please try to keep in mind that the manor is big enough for the both of you.”

Damian slams the door on Pennyworth’s face. He doesn’t need the commentary. 

As Pennyworth’s footsteps echo down the hallway and disappear, Damian sits on the bed laid out for him. It’s very soft. Opulently so, and Damian won’t admit it to anyone, but it’s just what he needs with his current aching muscles and bruises.

Unless, of course, this is a test and Father’s seeing if he’ll just lay down and do nothing the instant he gets the chance to.

If only Father would actually speak to him. Then he could figure out what’s required of him so he can show him what he’s actually capable of. It’s only been his dream since he was  _ three _ .

Damian decides to just keep up with his training. If Father’s installed some type of camera in the room - if this is a test - all he’ll see is a completely disciplined soldier. Then maybe he’ll stop with that condescending “you are a child” talk and admit that he’s more useful than the other kid he’s keeping on retainer. 

Training is hard in the bedroom, which seemed large when he first got there but small when he had to move around in it. First of all, he can’t practice with his weapons, since Father made him surrender them. Secondly, there’s no real equipment - Father must have equipment for training, of course, but that’s probably in his cavern - or the gym Damian passed when he was inspecting the exits and entrances. Either way, Father had made it clear his opinions on Damian using his equipment when he locked him out of his cave. He’s stuck with mostly things you can do without any supplies - sit-ups, push-ups, katas, and reviewing fundamental hand-to-hand techniques.

It keeps him occupied for a couple hours. Then, it doesn’t matter that his father might be disapproving of his idleness. He’s tired enough he just lets himself fall asleep in that soft bed.

 

***

 

The next morning, Damian is irritated to see the false son at breakfast.

He’d been hoping Father had gotten rid of him, after he hadn’t seen him at all last night. But there the kid is, just sitting at the breakfast table and eating scrambled eggs like he owns the place. 

Damian suppresses a jealous scowl. 

The child looks up at him, glowering for about half of a second before he smooths his features into feigned concern, trying to get Damian to let his guard down no doubt. “What happened to you?” he asks.

Damian clicks his tongue against his teeth and doesn’t respond, because he has no idea what the kid is talking about.

“You look like you lost a fight with a food processor.”

Oh. The cuts. No wonder Mother asked him to put on that weird chalk - foundation, he means - the other day. Everyone outside the league is  _ obsessed  _ with minor cuts and injuries. 

“I  _ won  _ a fight,” Damian says. “I take it that’s not a feeling you’re familiar with?”

The concern drops from the kid’s face. He presses his mouth into a thin line, clearly unamused.

“That’s enough,” Father says as he enters the dining room, with his own plate full of scrambled eggs in tow. Behind him comes Pennyworth, who serves up Damian and himself before sitting down. 

“I don’t want any trouble today,” Father says. “I’ve got to get to the office, and Tim - you’ve got school.”

Tim sighs and pokes at his eggs unenthusiastically with his fork.

“Your name’s ‘Tim’?” Damian asks. He already knew that, of course - Father had said so the other day. But he still tries to make the name sound awkward when he says it, so that the other kid knows he’s disapproving of everything about him.

“Tim Drake - I mean,  _ Wayne _ ,” the kid says.

Damian smirks a little. “I’m Wayne,” he says. “  _ You’re  _ Drake.”

Tim scowls. He shoots a look to Father for a second, as if he’s expecting him to intervene on his behalf.

Weakness on his part. Damian can’t remember looking to Mother or Grandfather for help since he was six. 

“Just call him Tim,” Father says. 

Damian purses his lips with disapproval but nods. He doesn’t know why Father cares, but he’s not going to subvert his orders. Out loud.

In his head, he thinks he’ll refer to the false son as  _ Drake _ . 

Damian eats a couple bites of scrambled eggs - they’re really much better than he was expecting, but he doesn’t say so out loud - before figuring he’s waited long enough to find out what Father’s itinerary for him today is. “Am  _ I  _ going to the office with you as well?” he asks Father.

Father shakes his head. “No. You’re staying here.” 

Damian frowns. “But I - ” he avoid saying  _ I want to  _ because that wound sound pathetic. “Don’t you want me to learn what it is you do? Mother’s only told me of your Batman profession. She didn’t go much into this office thing.”

“It’s not as important,” Father says. “And you can’t just take a ten-year-old to work with you.” 

“ _ You  _ could, Master Bruce,” Pennyworth says.

Damian perks up a little.

Father sighs. He rubs his face. “I like to make public decisions that  _ won’t  _ give Lucius a heart attack.”

Drake smirks. “No, you don’t.”

Pennyworth smiles as well. “That would be news to me as well, sir.”

Damian frowns. It seems like there’s a joke that everyone’s “in” on except for him.

Father slouches a little, as if the other two have defeated him with mere words.

No, not  _ mere  _ words. Grandfather would remind him that words can topple civilizations. Part of why he was never allowed to neglect the scholarly part of his education in favor of solely assassination. 

But still, even with all his education he has no clue what this means.

“Fine,” Father says. “You can come in the office. But there are rules you have to follow.”

Damian crosses his hands in his lap, ready to listen.

“No one in the office knows I’m Batman. No one knows I’ve had any contact with the League of Shadows. No one knows I can fight.”

Damian attempts and fails to suppress a grimace.

“What?” Father asks.

“You let the people around you think you’re  _ helpless _ ?”

“Physically, yes,” Father says. “It helps I what I need to do to do if no one knows Batman is Bruce Wayne.”

In the background, Drake shifts a little.

“I mean if no one knows  _ I’m  _ Bruce Wayne,” Father finishes. “Either way, you’re to be on civilian behavior.” He pauses a second. “You  _ do  _ know what civilian behavior is, right?”

Damian tries to recollect everything he’s learned about civilians over the years. They expect minors to be much more helpless than they really are - he knows Grandfather used to have him exploit his age on some missions to get close to targets. They don’t have any dignity  - at least, he’s seen his teachers beg way too often to assume that they do. They must be smart enough, though, otherwise the League wouldn’t have enlisted in so many for his non-assassin education.

“I - I think I do,” Damian says haltingly.

Pennyworth, Father, and Drake each take a beat to look concerned. Damian hates it. He feels like there’s a joke going on again that he’s not part of.

“I mean I  _ do _ ,” Damian clarifies. “I’m not  _ stupid _ .” 

Father clenches his hand in a fist and Damian has to physically stop himself from jumping up, to meet his presumed challenge. He doesn’t want Father to think he’s jumpy or unsure in his skills. So he’ll wait until he  _ actually  _ indicates he wants to fight.

“I’m not mad at you,” Father says in that voice that seems like he’s trying to be gentle. Damian can’t help but hate it. Again. He sounds like he’s trying to talk to an infant. 

“I didn’t think you were,” Damian says stiffly.

It takes a bit, but finally whatever expression Father had dissipates. Instead of pressing the topic, he says, “I see you’re already wearing the outfit Alfred laid out for you.”

Damian nods. It’s a western style suit with a white undershirt and black jacket. It doesn’t exactly fit him quite right - a little long around the ankles and a little tight around the shoulders - but it works well enough.

“That’s good. I’ll go to the store and get -” Father sighs heavily, “get you something to cover up those cuts.”

Damian lets himself have a small victorious smile. Earlier Father was acting like it was Mother who was strange for suggesting he cover the evidence of battle but now it’s Father’s own idea. He hopes the irony isn’t lost on Father.

“Well, uh, have fun explaining this,” Drake waves his hands around Damian, “in the office. I’m gonna go to school.” And he grabs his backpack and leaves.

Damian frowns a little. “What was that about?” he asks Father. 

“I think Tim would appreciate it if you were nicer,” Father says, which didn’t really answer his question at all. 

“I am nice,” Damian says. Though he’s not sure if he means it. Niceness was never something Grandfather cared to emphasize, and Mother didn’t really slide it in in her teachings either.

Father raises an eyebrow,  _ incredibly  _ doubtfully.

Damian doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he doesn’t. Instead, he starts mentally going over all his interactions with Ravi - the one civilian he can think of who wasn’t terrified of him or his family. Though he  _ should  _ have been, he thinks, after what Grandfather did to him. Blinding him for trespassing in his domain - and Damian could have stopped it.

Damian pushes his plate away. He’s not hungry anymore. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summarizing this chapter for the chapter summary made me think not much happens in it, but I think it's an important transition.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce takes Damian to work, and Damian finally gets to interact with normal people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never been as self conscious about dialogue as I was when I was trying to make some BS business sounding dialogue here.
> 
> Also, the civilians (except Lucius) are just random guys I made up. So you don't have to scour DC wiki trying to figure out why you don't recognize their names.

In truth, taking Damian to work isn’t  _ really _ a scandalous idea, like Batman had played it off at breakfast.

His father had taken him to work when he was a kid occasionally. Not to surgery, obviously, but to explain the various functions of both his clinic and the company. And his mother had explained in detail the importance of both her and his father’s charitable causes. Some of his fondest memories had been sitting in their laps and lulling to sleep as they explained things he didn’t quite understand but they obviously deeply cared about.

So… hypothetically… it might be nice to do something like that with Damian.

Less hypothetically, he’s wondering how long he can maintain a secret identity with the kid around. He seems alarmingly,  _ extremely worryingly,  _ badly socialized. It might just be his gut - Batman’s never been really  _ good  _ at social etiquette - but the whole “I  _ think  _ I can be a civilian” thing and seeming to prepare to fight whenever Batman clenched his fist was setting him on edge.

_ Bruce,  _ he has to remind himself. At work, it’s Bruce. If he thinks of himself as Batman, he’s just going to slip into the wrong voice.

And besides, maybe being Bruce around Damian would help too. Something with no need to be on edge, no need to try to continuously demonstrate his fighting skills…

And maybe he can see if he can mention Dick sometime during the day. So Damian understands he doesn’t  _ have  _ to hate Tim. He’s allowed to have two sons at once - it’s not like he’s going to run out of the ability to care. 

Bruce is pretty sure he’s got a good itinerary then. All he has to do is let Damian see what’s going on, so he can see a non-fighting side of his life, and then name drop Dick so Damian knows he doesn’t have to be jealous.

He’s pretty proud of himself for this plan, considering he didn’t even have to ask Alfred or someone who’s better with kids for help.

When the two of them arrive at Wayne Tower, Damian’s eyes seem alight as he sees the sign.

“ _ Wayne  _ Enterprises?” he asks. “So all this is yours, then?”

Bruce nods hesitantly. “I’m more of a figurehead. I have input on the board, but the CEO is currently Lucius Fox.”

Damian frowns. “Why would you allow yourself to be usurped?”

“I’m not ‘usurped’. Lucius is  _ very  _ good at his job, and frankly, I don’t have the head for numbers that he does.”

“I have a head for numbers,” Damian says proudly. He tilts his head slightly up with that sentence. “I have a graduate-level education in economics.”

As is usual, Bruce has no idea if this kid is taking him for a ride. “Uh… Good,” he says. “That’ll come in handy when you need a job. There are a lot of opportunities with a degree in economics.”

“Well I hardly intend on being an analyst,” Damian says. “I’m the heir to… You know.”

Bruce nods.

“And your heir, as well,” Damian says. He looks up at him seriously. Seems to be hanging on to whatever his next word will be.

“I - you don’t have to think about that yet,” Bruce says awkwardly. He starts through the double doors to the tower before Damian can pick up the heir conversation again.

“If this company has your name, is it a family company?” Damian asks as they hit the lobby.

“Yes,” Bruce says. He scans the lobby for people. One of his more recent hires - Peter Utkin - is there, on security duty at the front desk. 

“Mr. Wayne!” Peter exclaims. “Pleasure to see you this morning! And who might this be?”

“I’m working with Dr. Thompkins’ clinic - one of her patients had a son who was really interested in what we do, so I thought I’d help the kid out,” Bruce says, going with the first lie he could think of.

Not the smoothest one ever, but Leslie would back him up for it.

Peter smiles. “That’s awfully kind of you, sir!” 

Bruce lets himself smile politely back. 

Damian’s oddly silent during this, but he still follows him to the elevator, where Bruce can let out a sigh of relief.

“Father,” Damian asks as they ascend. His voice seems more strained than normal. “Are you  _ ashamed  _ of me?”

“What?! No!”

Damian presses his lips together in a thin line. His brow-line is angled down in the center so deeply and angrily it might as well be going into his eyes. 

“Why do you think that?” Bruce asks.

“You  _ lied  _ about me,” Damian says. “You don’t want your people to know that I’m your son.”

“I - ” Bruce sighs. He doesn’t know whether he wants people to know or not. “I want to know more about you before making any knowledge available to the public,” he says finally.

“It’s not as if you have to send out a press release,” Damian says. He seems to sniff with offense, and then grinds his teeth a little. He lowers his head, and if Bruce didn’t know better, he’d say it was almost deferent. “I mean, I understand. Father.” 

Bruce is guessing he doesn't. But he’s not about to argue it. “I’ll show you my office,” Bruce says, trying to change the conversation topic. “It’s on the top floor.”

“I’d expect no less.” 

The doors ding open, and Bruce tries to rush Damian past the employees so no one can ask who he is, but he gets mobbed by an employee he knows is one of Lucius’s accountants. He can’t really blow this off. 

The employee - James - shows him a graph. Bruce has enough knowledge to  _ technically  _ understand what he’s looking at, but it’s still not really taking up the majority of his brainpower. No, instead he’s trying to figure out how to rush Damian out of here. 

“You see,” James says, “Profits are  _ down  _ on the new engines even though the preliminary surveys indicated the buyers  _ approve  _ of the changes we made - trying to fit the new ‘green’ regulations - uh…” he trails off as he notices Damian trying to peek over Bruce’s shoulder, and says, “So… Mr. Fox mentioned you might want to discuss the proposed regulations…” he looks down at Damian and reaches his hand towards him.

Bruce is expecting whatever’s about to happen won’t be good.

“You interested in boring regulations, little guy?” he asks, and ruffles Damian’s hair.

Damian’s demeanor changes so quickly Bruce thinks he’s about to try to stab the accountant - even though he already confiscated the kids’ knives. He recognizes the expression Damian’s making - he makes the same one whenever he’s trying to intimidate a crook.

James steps back a little. 

“Really sorry,” Bruce says, “I’ll look over those in my office.” 

James hands him the papers and Bruce practically drags Damian into the office behind him.

“What the hell was that about?” Bruce asks the instant the door shuts. “It looked like you wanted to  _ kill  _ him!”

“Well I  _ didn’t  _ kill him, doesn’t that get me any credit?” Damian snaps. “Besides,” he starts straightening his hair out desperately. “He was getting familiar.”

“ _ Familiar _ ?” Bruce repeats. “Familiar isn’t a crime, Damian.”

Damian pouts slightly.

Bruce rubs his face.

“All I did was  _ look  _ at him,” Damian says.

Bruce walks over to his desk and sets his papers on it. “But you  _ wanted  _ to intimidate him?” he asks.

“If I wanted to intimidate him, threats or violence would have been involved,” Damian says. “I just didn’t want him to touch me.”

Bruce debates unpacking the ‘threats or violence’. It’d be a good place to start, right? To ask him how often he did threaten people or… be violent. But he was kind of hoping to  _ avoid  _ any of that stuff here.

So he decides to drop the topic and move to what he had  _ wanted  _ to show Damian.

He sits down and starts spreading the papers out in front of him. “Here,” he says. “Why don’t you come take a look at this.”

Damian walks behind the desk and stands formally at his side. Bruce debates offering him a spot on his lap - that’s what you do for little kids, right? - but figures it might be read as too weird, especially after the hair touching thing.

“Why don’t we help James figure out why we’re not getting the profit we’re expecting.”

Damian starts pouring over the papers. As he does, he seems to release a little of whatever tension he had earlier - now focusing only on the task Bruce gave him.

“It was based on some focus group,” Damian says, “right?”

Bruce nods. “Yes, that’s how we do all our stuff. You have to actually know there’s a market for something before you release it.” 

Damian clicks his tongue against his teeth. “I know that.” He frowns and starts looking through the sheets. “I’d like to see the surveys you did -- ”

Bruce helps him flip through the papers to find them. As Damian starts looking over the data, he smiles slightly - not smirky, not angrily, just genuinely excited, to the best of Bruce’s knowledge. 

“Well,  _ duh _ ,” Damian says as he grabs a pen to start underlining things. “Father, have you ever heard of ‘P-hacking’...?”

 

***

 

As Bruce watches Damian go over all the files, he’s vaguely aware that this could be some type of hostile takeover attempt on Ra’s’ part. 

Damian says he hadn’t known who Bruce was until two days ago - but Ra’s did. If he or Talia wanted Damian to inherit the company and use it in their crusade, he certainly seems to have the preliminary knowledge necessary to working it.

Mathematically, at least. The networking aspect and pleasing investors - Bruce is having a hard time imagining Damian doing that. 

He feels bad immediately after having the thoughts - he’d been  _ trying  _ to be less paranoid since the Crisis. It didn’t help that he was usually right, though. 

Still, even if this is a plan on the part of the Al Ghuls, there’s no evidence Damian has any ulterior motives for now. He seems to genuinely be hanging onto Bruce’s every word and doing what he asks. Hasn’t even protested not being called his son again. 

Bruce did regret lying a little when he saw how offended Damian was, but he really doesn’t want any illegitimate son rumors floating around. He got enough of those because of the playboy reputation. He didn’t need anything proving them  _ right _ . 

Bruce gets Alfred to bring the two of them lunch, so he doesn’t have to go out anywhere. He asks Alfred to stay in with them and eat as well. He wants Damian to get used to being  _ nice  _ to people who aren’t him. 

“So, how goes the first day at work?” Alfred asks Damian politely.

Damian pokes at his salad. “It’s going well, Pennyworth. Father’s allowed me to spot some errors in his people’s decisions.”

Bruce tries to hang onto every word of Damian’s tone. From what he can  _ tell  _ it sounds civil. A little stiff, but he’s come to expect that from the boy.

Bruce smiles slightly. “Yeah, he’s a bright kid,” he says, and sort of reaches for Damian before realizing he has no idea how to interact with him. He awkwardly pats him on the shoulder and withdraws his hand. 

Damian smiles a little. His eyes soften in a way that makes Bruce think it’s genuine. He’s basking in the faint praise.

Even though he objected to being called a kid earlier, it’s not bad now. All he had to do was treat him like a person and let him see some non-assassin environment to get him to relax. Bruce is  _ totally  _ handling this.  

“That makes me glad to hear,” Alfred says, and silence overtakes again soon after that. 

“If this  _ is  _ a family company,” Damian begins after a couple minutes of eating, “I  _ am  _ next in line to inherit it, am I not?”

Bruce cringes internally. He counts off in order of eldest to youngest - Dick, Cass, Tim…

“Fourth in line,” Bruce says. “Depending on everyone’s interest. Not all of my… children… would want this.” He can’t really imagine Dick or Cass wanting to run Wayne Enterprises. Dick had already made a point of striking out for himself, and Cassandra seemed to value her vigilante work way more than a civilian job. Which was just fine by him. She was probably too talented to be wasting half her day away in an office.

Part of the reason he got Lucius to be CEO for himself, as well. 

Damian is still frowning at the fourth in line thing, though. “I  _ am  _ better at it than any of your other ‘children’, though, right?” he asks. He doesn’t move his hands, but Bruce can  _ hear  _ the air-quotes around ‘children’. 

Bruce doesn’t bother answering that. “Why is this so important to you, Damian?”

“I - well, don’t you  _ want  _ a son to continue your work?” Damian asks.

Alfred gives Bruce a careful look. “There are lots of people who are willing to continue Master Bruce’s work,” he says.  “I’m sure you’ll be a valued addition to the team once you settle in.”

Bruce nods. Alfred was always better at putting things more delicately than he was.

Damian doesn’t seem entirely convinced. “Why do you assume I’m staying here?” he asks eventually.

Bruce presses his lips together. He’s not entirely sure of what happened during Damian’s childhood, but from what he’s seen, he’s not letting this kid go back to the League. If he wants to return, Talia is going to have to answer  _ a lot  _ of questions. Including if Damian was telling the truth - if he was actually subject to the same training the adult Shadows were. 

If he was, he’s already killed someone. The thought sits badly in Bruce’s stomach. 

“Do you want to stay here?” Alfred asks while Bruce is busy worrying.

Damian shrugs. “I might. I don’t know. The League will probably require my presence eventually. Especially with… things how they are.”

Does he not know that Bruce is already aware of Ra’s’ death? Is he trying to keep it a secret?

Before Bruce can interrogate him about it, though, Damian continues, “Besides,” he says. “I’m still learning about you, Father. I… appreciate the opportunity to help you with your company, but I’d like much better to see you at work in your other job.”

Bruce groans internally. He’s  _ probably  _ going to have to let Damian tag along, but he still doesn’t like the idea. “That might be possible,” he says. Intentionally noncommittally. 

From Damian’s expression, Bruce can tell the kid knows he might be stringing him along. 

“I might be going to the store later today,” Alfred says, changing the topic. “Is there anything I can pick up to make you feel more comfortable at home, Master Damian?”

Damian drums his fingers against the table a little. “I’d already be loads more  _ comfortable  _ if Father would return to me my weapons.”

Bruce sighs. “Not happening.”

Damian thinks a moment. “Maybe a drawing pad, if it’s not too frivolous,” he says hesitantly. 

“I can’t imagine why it would be frivolous,” Alfred says, glancing at Bruce to check with him.

“Of course it’s not!” Bruce says, a little too enthusiastically. Honestly, he’s just happy Damian’s expressed interest in something a normal kid might be interested in.

“And charcoal pencils,” Damian adds. “And a kneaded eraser.”

“I can certainly manage that,” Alfred says, as he takes out a post-it and starts writing Damian’s request down. 

“And maybe some cookies,” Damian keeps going. “But  _ good  _ cookies.”

“Good cookies?” Alfred asks.

“You know, ma’amoul, not oreos.”

Alfred writes it down. 

“Sorry,” Damian continues, “I just… really don’t like oreos.”

“That’s fine,” Bruce says. 

Damian continues helping Alfred with his shopping list, and Bruce relaxes a little as he seems to get more relaxed and more comfortable with requesting normal kid stuff. By time he’s done, Damian’s added a ton more art supplies to the list, including oil paints. That’s probably going to run up a bill, but Bruce is having a hard time caring. He’s just glad to see his son smiling a little.

The day goes by smoothly enough that Bruce has almost forgotten the source of tension in the morning with the “he’s not my son” thing. He only remembers when they’re leaving at five - the lobby is busy, and he practically crashes into Lucius. After a brief apology, Bruce mentions seeing James earlier today.

Bruce starts to get the reports he and Damian looked over while Lucius clearly eyes Damian with curiosity. And before Lucius can ask a question, or Bruce can offer an explanation, Damian loudly says, “I’m his  _ son _ .”

It’s probably just his imagination, but Bruce can swear he heard the entire lobby go quiet. 

“That’s what you were going to ask, right?” Damian asks.

“Um… no….” Lucius says.

“‘Why is this weird kid following Bruce Wayne around?’” Damian continues. “Well, I’m his son. His  _ real  _ son. You can get a blood test if you want.”

And to think Bruce had thought things were going better earlier.

“I was going to thank you for looking over these,” Lucius says to Bruce. 

Bruce nods mutely. He can slowly hear conversation pick back up in the lobby and is kind of hoping no one had noticed Damian’s outburst. He grabs Damian by the wrist and starts dragging him out of the building.

“I’m sorry, Father,” Damian says as they’re getting out to the street. “It’s just so -- so -- ”

He forces himself to be quiet until they get inside the car.

“So  _ frustrating _ !” Damian finishes as he buckles his seatbelt. “And I thought you’d be less - well, less  _ ashamed  _ of me now -- ”

“I’m not interested in hearing excuses!” Bruce snaps. Next to him, Damian seems to wilt a little. From the driver’s seat, Alfred gives Bruce a judgemental look through the mirror. 

Bruce frowns a little. He knows Alfred’s going to give him a list of what he did wrong when they get home. Bruce is forty-two, but sometimes Alfred still lectures him on proper etiquette like he’s twelve. 

Bruce is aware he’s hard to get along with, of course. Too many of his friends or coworkers have told him so directly or indirectly - the most direct version of which was just when things devolved to blows.

But he’s  _ pretty  _ sure he’s being reasonable in this situation. 

Well, he’s said that before, but he  _ means  _ it this time. He’s pretty sure that barring Alfred, he’s the most reasonable adult Damian has in his life right now. He’s not going to let the situation go to waste. Even if he’s not the  _ perfect _ father, he’s going to be there for Damian. He’s already missed ten years, and he has no intention of missing ten more. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim calls in a contact to decide whether Damian's dangerous, and decides to try to give the kid a shot. What's the worst that could happen? 
> 
> New and Improved chapter featuring guest star skype call of obviously autistic Cassandra Cain!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should probably stop posting these so fast, but it is the only thing keeping me sane during finals.

Tim gets home to Bruce and Alfred in the middle of a parental dispute in the living room.

That’s what Dick had always called it, when they argued over what to do about Bruce’s partners or one of the Robins. Or he’d jokingly call Alfred  _ Mom  _ in the cave. Kind of reconstructing a family, Tim figured.

When Barbara was there, she’d ask Dick why Alfred as  _ Mom  _ and not  _ Dad _ , since he’s a man. She’d ask if it had to do with heteronormativity or gender essentialism - you know, moms do  _ that  _ in the house, dads do  _ that.  _ Dick would stumble over his words and back up until he realized she was mostly just ribbing him. It was… nice.

But Dick and Barbara weren’t here. Dick was in New York and Barbara was in Metropolis and they were each doing their Nightwing or Oracle thing.

Thinking of Dick just makes him remember that he would have killed for a sibling earlier. Well, not  _ literally _ , obviously. But sitting at home alone and watching reports of Batman and Robin on TV, he always liked to imagine that  _ he  _ was hanging out with them and Batman was  _ his  _ dad.

It seemed kind of pathetic to him, but then he  _ actually got to meet them _ . Which makes it retroactively awesome. And when he met him, it was like Dick was the older brother he never had.

So Damian being here should be  _ good  _ right? He’d get a chance to be an older brother for a change. He’d get to teach someone how to jump on trains with blindfolds, like Dick did. Or spar or figure out why there they went wrong on math homework…

The only thing is, he can’t stand the kid.

It’s not like he’s jealous. Well, he’s  _ not _ . It’s just that everything Damian does rubs him the wrong way, from straight up announcing his plans to replace him, to insisting Tim’s not Bruce’s son, to acting like he’d obviously be a much better Robin than Tim even though he’s  _ ten _ . He’s got an ego the size of Montana. 

It doesn’t help that Bruce isn’t willing to stand up for Tim. He’s not reaffirming that he belongs here. It just seems like he’s trying to pass this off as some cute sibling rivalry with a kid he just met. 

Tim figures he’s got one thing that will make him more comfortable with Damian being here, and that’s having it verified that he’s not a threat. That’s what Bruce  _ should  _ do if someone’s defecting from the League. If this kid has even given a hint that he wants to defect, which Tim doesn’t recall hearing.

And really, Tim can only think of one person who can verify the new kid isn’t a threat - or prove that he really is to Bruce. Sadly, that person is currently on the other side of the planet. Fortunately, video calls exist.

In order to enact this plan, Tim starts by sneaking into the Batcave. It’s easy enough. Bruce had his special entrance re-opened after Azrael’d walled it up. The next part of the plan involves hacking into the batcomputer.  _ That  _ part will be hard, if Bruce ever got Barbara to improve the security.

Tim’s betting Bruce never got around to that, though. With how stressed and untrusting he was the last two years, he thinks he’d want to have complete control over security himself. 

So hacking into the batcomputer isn’t going to be  _ easy _ , but hopefully  _ possible _ . After all, half of being Robin is going around Batman’s back, if you ask Dick. 

Tim boots up the computer and tries logging on with his password at first, just to see if he even needs to sneak around Bruce’s back for this. All he wants are the video files from the batcave and main room of the manor. 

After getting the files - didn’t require hacking, since Bruce must have trusted them with him - and erasing the fact that he logged on and got them - that part did require hacking - Tim gets set up in his room to Skype with Cassandra. Last email she sent, she was in a town with good internet. That was only - he checks his inbox - thirty hours ago, so he’s hoping nothing changed. 

Tim sets up his laptop and sits on his bed. After about two calls, Cass finally answers. 

She’s laying down on a bed in a small hotel room and the computer is the only thing lighting her face. Her eyes are half-shut from sleep and the sudden light. “Tim,” she says slowly. “What  _ time  _ is it?”

“Uh, five p.m.,” Tim answers. “Unless you mean in… uh…”

“It’s  _ three _ ,” Cass answers. “In the morning. Just got to bed.”

Tim smiles a little bashfully. “Sorry…”

Cass shrugs it off. She’s rubbing her eyes and sitting up now. After a second of though, she says, “It must be important.”

Tim nods. “It is,” he says. 

He wants to ask her how things are going on her end, with her mission, but Cass hasn’t been telling much of anyone about it. He thinks only Bruce, and maybe Barbara, have the full picture.

“I’ve got some video files I want you to look over.”

Cass nods. She flicks a light on next to her and gestures for Tim to continue.

Tim uploads the files. 

“What - ? ” she begins, and then rubs her face. She frowns a little. Frustration?

_ What am I looking at? _ she signs in ASL.

“Are you feeling non-verbal?” Tim asks her. 

_ Obviously _ . 

Tim decides to sign back to her, just because he knows that even though listening is easier than speaking for her, neither are her native tongue. ASL isn’t either, but it’s a lot closer to body language than spoken English. 

_ The kid talking to Batman _ , Tim signs.

Cass frowns as the clip plays in front of her. Right now, it’s when Damian first got there. Talia is there, acting weirdly confident and at ease, and Damian seems to be looking between the two of them.

_ Not telepathic _ , Cass signs.  _ Be more specific. _

_ Is he dangerous? _

__ _ Not telepathic _ , Cass signs again. 

Tim sighs.  _ Just keep watching _ .

Granted, Tim hadn’t watched the entire thing before Cass, so he has no idea what’s going to happen. But he’s hoping she’ll be able to help him.

Tim can’t hear what anyone is saying in the recording - it’s only visual, and it’s only far away, from the vantage point of the cave’s ceiling. He has no clue how good Cass’s body language reading works at a distance, but it must work at least some - otherwise she wouldn’t be able to dodge bullet fire. 

As Damian starts attacking Bruce ( _ I knew it! _ thinks Tim) Cass perks up a little. She watches the entire encounter, and then tells Tim to pause.

_ He’s trained _ , she says.  _ League of Shadows _ . 

Tim frowns a little. He already  _ knew  _ this.

_ But is he  _ dangerous _?  _ he asks.

Cass shrugs.  _ Anyone who can fight can be dangerous, Robin _ .

Tim rubs his eyes and flops on his bed in disappointment. This isn’t telling him anything new.

There’s a  _ click _ , and as Tim sits up he can see Cass was flicking her computer.

_ Look at me when we’re talking, Robin _ .

Tim nods. He guesses looking away from an ASL conversation would probably be about as conductive to understanding as plugging your ears during a verbal one.

_ I’m concerned _ , Cass says.

_ Why? _

Cass grimaces as Tim signs that last word.

_ Why?  _ she repeats incredulously.

Tim cringes a little. He’s guessing whatever he did upset her. She doesn’t  _ normally  _ repeat people’s words unless she has a problem with them.

Or it’s like… an echolalia thing and she’s trying them out - either a new spoken word or sign. But she normally does that when she’s having fun, and he’s getting the idea that she is not having fun here.

_ There is a kid who has League of Shadows training _ , Cass says.  _ Why would I not be concerned? _

Her movements are a little sharper, a little angrier, at the last part.

Tim rubs his face. He feels like an asshole. As far as he knows, this thing was super triggering to Cass. “Sorry,” he says. “I mean - ”  _ Sorry _ , he signs.

Cass shrugs it off again. Her lips are still pressed into a thin line though, and her eyebrows are set with determination.  _ Should I come home? _

__ _ No! _ Tim says quickly.  _ I mean, aren’t you doing something important? Anyway, there’s no way Batman can’t handle this, right? _

Cass thinks for a moment. After a while, she nods.

_ You’re right _ , she signs.  _ Batman…  _ she trails off for a little after just putting up the sign she’d picked out for Bruce’s name - which was always  _ Batman _ \- her combination of a modified  _ bat  _ and  _ man  _ in a way she liked. Almost everyone else’s name looked like their hero identity too - Tim’s was a bird and an “R” and Barbara’s was a computer and eyes. 

_ Batman is a good man _ , she says eventually. 

Tim nods. They talk a little longer - how everyone’s doing, how each of them are holding up without the other batkids - but Tim doesn’t bring up the Damian thing again. He mostly feels like a jerk, even though he didn’t get his question answered.

After their conversation, Tim resolves to make at least one effort to be nice to Damian, if only for Cass. Granted, he’s not sure whether she’s concerned because she’s seeing herself in another kid who was raised to fight, or because she’s just… really too nice. But he figures he’ll do it anyway. 

After dinner, Damian’s sitting in the living room, in front of the fireplace. He’s perched on a corner of the couch and sketching away in a drawing book, looking deceptively like a normal kid.

“Hey,” Tim says.

Damian looks at him briefly, then gets back to his drawing.

“What are you drawing?” Tim asks.

This time, Damian gives him a longer look. He’s narrowing his eyes, threateningly. “Nothing,” he says eventually. He angles the notebook away from Tim so he can’t see it.

_ It’s like making conversation with a brick wall _ , Tim thinks. 

Tim sits down on the couch - not next to Damian, because that wouldn’t go well, but on the opposite side.

This is so painful. Tim’s 99 percent sure that if he had introduced himself to Bruce and Dick the way that Damian is acting right now, they’d have told him to hit the road.

He wants to say it’s unfair, but he’s also aware how childish that sounds.

Tim tries again.

“Mind if I draw with you?” he asks. “I’m not such a bad artist myself.”

“I can’t physically stop you,” Damian says. 

Tim makes the kind of smile you make when you’re only doing it to avoid yelling at someone.

“May I …  _ please  _ have some of your paper then?” he asks. 

Damian wordlessly rips out a sheet of paper and hands it to him, along with a number 2 pencil. 

Tim hasn’t really drawn much since he was in art class at school, so he’s not really sure what to do. This seemed like a better idea right after talking with Cass, rather than when he actually had to interact with Damian. 

He starts sketching out someone’s face, not really sure who he’s going to make it until he’s got the features filled in. That’s probably not the best strategy, but whatever.

He winds up scribbling out what he’s working on and starting again.

Damian’s still focused intensely on whatever he’d been drawing when Tim just came in the room, though. His pencil is thicker and black all around the outside. It looks fancier than the one he gave Tim.

“How was your day?” Tim asks as they’re drawing.

Damian shrugs. “Why do you need to ask? Do you not  _ know  _ what it’s like in the tower?”

Okay, so it’s on this again.

“Of course Bruce has taken me to his work before,” Tim says. “But I already know how it worked for me. I’m curious how it worked for you.”

Damian looks at Tim from the side of his eyes and sighs.  “If you must know, I was able to  _ help  _ Father with his business. Because he trusted me enough to show me what he was working on. Have you ever done that?”

Tim groans internally. This is going to be a  _ really  _ long night.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damian dreams about his family and tries to cope with his jealousy for Tim, whom he views as his rival.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just for heads up: This chapter is where we start seeing more fight scenes or physical violence if that's potentially upsetting to you. In the chapter it's all in the dream but still.

As he sleeps, Damian Al Ghul’s body is in Gotham, but his mind wanders back to the Black Citadel where he trained.

    At least, he _thinks_ it’s the Black Citadel. The air is warm and musky, as the sparring room doesn’t have any windows. Giant stone pillars and grey curtains surround him on all four walls, and the clang of swords clashing against each other echoes through the air.

    At first, he’s not sure whether it’s a dream or a memory. In it, he’s sparring a man who is a _lot_ taller than he is. The man holds a long, straight blade in his hand - very similar to the one that Damian has, but much bigger, because it’s sized for an adult.

    Father’s there, and Damian has a brief thought that that it must be a dream then, as he sees him standing next to Mother. Both of them are dressed in ceremonial armor - mother’s red and gold trimmed, Father’s black, with a bat-shaped helmet. Both of them are watching him spar, both of them are counting on him not to let them down.

    The man unleashes a relentless assault of blows on Damian and it’s all he can do to keep his sword up in a guarded position. Every time he blocks a strike, more strength seeps from his arms because of just how _much_ stronger the man is than he. A burning courses through his arms as he can feel himself losing energy. If he had any sense, he’d concede the fight and lay down his sword, but he _can’t_. His parents are watching.

    With that, he spares a glance in their direction, and his distraction earns him a slice across the eye and cheek from his opponent. He cries out in pain, suddenly half blind. Warm blood pours down his face and he drops his sword, and then his body, to the ground.

    The man he’s sparring laughs.

    Damian scrambles for his sword and attempts to pick it up, but the man brings an foot down on his wrist hard, and Damian screams again in pain.

    “Mother! Father!” Damian cries. He looks towards them pathetically. Their feet are the only thing in his view.

    “The fight’s not over yet, Damian,” Mother says. “An _Al Ghul_ never surrenders.”

    “And I don’t have any use for soldiers who start crying for their mothers at the first blood,” Father says.

    Both of their voices sound distorted as they echo through the large room. Damian might as well be hearing them from under water.

    “You, however,” Father says to the man Damian was sparring, “did well. An excellent display of brutality.”

    The man finally removes his foot from Damian’s wrist and kneels down before Father. He rests his forehead on a clenched fist and says, “Of course, Father. I am yours.”

    It’s only now that Damian can make out the man’s features and realize he’s looking at _Drake_.

    The air in the room seems to thicken. As Father steps before Drake, a flash of green runs through his eyes.

    Damian rolls over on his stomach, so he can start to get to his feet. As he struggles, Drake catches his eye and laughs again.

    “Now you match _Mara_ ,” he says, even though there’s no way Drake can know his cousins name. In the dream, it all make sense. “Maybe you’ll finally realize you’re just as worthless as she is.”

    Hot tears roll down Damian’s cheeks, even though he can’t remember the last time he cried. Tears, like all expressions of emotions, come much easier in dreams.

    “I was right to think you’re just a child,” Father says, with something cruel in his smile. He kneels down and grabs Damian’s face in his hand. Damian feels tiny and worthless and weak all at once. “Good for eating cookies and playing with paints and not much else.”

    “I’m not!” Damian protests, hating the whininess in his voice but unable to resist it. “Father, please! Give me another chance!”

    “You already had your chances,” Mother says. “Three-hundred-and-sixty-five days of them. If you couldn’t impress your father or me with the Year of Blood, what makes you think you can now?”  
    Father releases Damian’s face roughly, practically shoving him away, and stands up. Damian blinks frantically, trying to clear his vision from the tears and blood, but he can’t.

    The room starts to sink, but only for him - he sinks into an ever growing green pit as Father, Mother, and Drake stand above him.

    “Please!” Damian cries.

    He slides into the green pit as Mother and Father start laughing.

    Then he wakes up.

 

***

 

Damian sits up, half in panic, in the bed. It’s wrong. The entire room is wrong - the air is cold and tastes vaguely of some air freshener, the texture of the sheets is off, and he’s covered by heavy, thick blankets -

    Oh. Right. He’s in Father’s house.

    Damian suppresses a shudder as he thinks of Father. It was only a dream. A stupid dream at that. It didn’t make any sense, and he’d never debase himself by begging or letting himself be defeated by Drake.

    Still, Damian runs a hand over his face, just to make sure he’s uninjured, as if somehow, the dream could hurt him in real life. It’s not bloody, but his hand does come back covered in sweat.   _It’s the sheets_ , he thinks. _There are too many damn blankets in this house. You can’t sleep_.

    But more importantly _it’s not the dream_.

    That’s it. The air outside feels cold, but that’s probably just because he’s not under the blankets anymore.

    Damian creaks open his door to run to the washroom and wash his face, but he hates to say, he’s having a hard time remembering where it is. It feels as though he’s left his mental map back in the Black Citadel, and now he’s lost - Father’s house is so big, and his brain so sleep addled, that he might as well be in the middle of nowhere.

    He’s frozen by momentary panic, even though it’s the _stupidest_ thing to get panicked about. Something that would worry a _kid_.

    A light flicks on down the hall.

    Damian wipes his face really quickly with his shirt, to make himself presentable. He doesn’t want to get caught looking like like this in front of Father. His disapproval from the dream is still ringing around in his head.

    But it’s only Pennyworth that turns the corner.

    Damian relaxes slightly.

    “Master Damian!” Pennyworth says. “What are you doing up at this hour?”

    “What are _you_ doing up at this hour?” Damian repeats, even though he has no idea what time it is. Adrenaline is still coursing through his body. He needs to get rid of it, and for a moment he thinks that he wants to fight the servant, even though it’d be pointless and unfair.

    “Preparing for the day,” Pennyworth says. If he took notice at Damian’s tone, he doesn’t say so. “Your father should get home any moment. Are you - are you _alright_?” he asks, staring a little harder at Damian.

    Damian shifts slightly. He wishes Pennyworth would just ignore it, rather than acting concerned about him.

    “I’m always alright,” Damian says. He makes sure to lift his head up a little, proudly, to make up for the lack of pride he feels right now. “You needn’t be worried about me. I’ve trained myself to peak physical perfection.”

    For a moment, Pennyworth looks doubtful. His mouth is a little drawn down and his eyes are slightly widened, as if in concern. But then, he smiles a little wryly. “Like your father,” he says.

    Damian winces a little. Normally, the comparison would make him glad, but right now it just sinks his stomach. “Yes, exactly like my father,” he says unconvincingly.

    “And your mother?” Pennyworth asks carefully.

    Damian hesitates. Then, he asks, “Did you know my mother, Pennyworth?” He’s not sure he _needs_ the servant’s opinion on Mother, but talking is helping ground him in the real world. He’s not in the Black Citadel. His parents don’t hate him or think he’s worthless. He’s _here_ , in his father’s house.

    “We met once or twice,” Pennyworth says.

    “When?”

“More often than not, when she was saving your father’s life.”

Damian grins a little at that. It lets him have an image of his head of his parents fighting together, against a common enemy. He can almost place together what his family would look like if he’d been allowed to meet Father sooner - the _real_ version of how it’d happen, where they’d all be happy. Not some stupid nightmare. “From what?”

Pennyworth sighs. After a beat, he says, “More often than not, your grandfather.”

Damian stops grinning.

“I’m sorry,” Pennyworth says. “But I thought you were aware Batman and Ra’s Al Ghul were enemies.”

Damian waves a hand, as if to shake off his apologies. “Of course. I knew that. I’m just surprised Grandfather allowed her to get away with it.”

“ _Allowed_?” Pennyworth asks, raising his eyebrows in concern.

What’s _he_ have to be concerned about?

Damian shifts a little uncomfortably. Every stupid thing now is just reminding him of the dream. He doesn’t know why - Ra’s Al Ghul didn’t even make an appearance. He rubs at his face where he had his imaginary injury unconsciously, then, before Pennyworth can notice, turns it into rubbing the back of his neck, like he’s just working out an ache.

“You don’t seem to be here against your will,” Damian blurts out, mostly trying to change the topic away from Grandfather. Still, he knows it’s not unprecedented for servants to work against their will - half of his civilian tutors were kidnapped.

Pennyworth leans back ever so slightly. “Of course not. Why were you expecting that?”

Damian shakes his head. He doesn’t know how to answer that question, so he continues, “You must have very high esteem for my father.”

Now, Pennyworth relaxes. “I do,” he says, and the corners of his eyes crinkle as he smiles a little. “You know, I’ve been looking after him since he was your age.”

Damian has a thousand questions - Why? What about Father’s parents? What was Father like at his age? - but he knows he might not have the opportunity to ask them again. He hasn’t seen Pennyworth much when the man wasn’t shadowing Father or working. He hadn’t bothered to seek him out in the evening, either. He hadn’t imagined he’d have anything to say to him earlier.

And more importantly - he still doesn’t want to be alone with his thoughts.

“What was he like?” he asks. “My father, I mean.”

“He was… bright,” Pennyworth says. “Like you. A little bit of a loner. You know, if you wait a moment, I can bring up a picture.”

Damian nods eagerly.

Pennyworth reaches into his pocket and procures a smartphone. “I’ve diligently digitized all of Master Bruce’s records since the quake,” he says. “And now, I’m perfectly capable of embarrassing him whenever I want to.”

He starts to hand Damian the smartphone, but Damian holds a hand out to stop him. “Is this embarrassing for Father?”

Pennyworth shakes his head. “It’s just an expression. Sometimes, people object to childhood pictures being shared.”

Damian hesitates, curiosity battling with respect for Father.

“I can explain it to you, if you wish.”

Damian nods. Finally, someone’s explaining the rules for this strange new world Father’s taken him in.

“Well, if you’ve raised someone, and you care about them, sometimes you want to show other people how they were when they were younger because you want them to appreciate that person as much as you do. But some people - _especially_ the men in this family - can get a little embarrassed at that.”

“I already appreciate Father a lot,” Damian says, and grabs the phone from Pennyworth.

He finds himself staring at a boy around his age - obviously - with sharp blue eyes, an oval shaped face, thick black eyebrows, and a dour expression on his face. He seems to be glowering at the camera taking his picture.

Damian reaches his hand up to his own face, tracing over his features, trying to find some resemblance. The cheekbones, he thinks, and maybe the angle of his eyebrows. The hair color, obviously. And it’s completely changeable and arbitrary, but Damian could _swear_ he makes that expression as well. He practices it, just in case.

“Do you have any where he’s happy?” Damian asks, handing the phone back to Pennyworth.

Pennyworth nods. “Not in formal school pictures, that’s for sure. But... Ah, let’s see.”

He flips through the phone until he finds what he was looking for, and hands it to Damian.

The picture seems to be at night. There’s a bright flash lighting up Father’s face, and his pupils are reddened by the camera. He’s staring up at something in wonder, mouth half open and smiling.

“What’s he looking at?” Damian asks.

“A meteor shower.” Pennyworth smiles at the memory. “First time I’d seen him happy in weeks. You can understand why I had to take the picture, even under sub-par lighting conditions.”

Damian frowns a little. “Was my father depressed as a child?” The idea seems weird to him.

“I suppose, yes.”

“Why?”

Pennyworth waits for a moment, scratching his chin in though. “His parents died when he was not much younger than you are now,” he says finally.

“Oh.”

Damian should have known that. Not because anyone had told him - Mother’s description of Father was in depth, but she hardly had the time to give him his entire biography - but because why else would Father’s servant have been the one raising him at this age?

“What killed them?” Damian asks.

“A criminal,” Pennyworth says.

Damian nods. He’s not sure what to say in response to all of this, so he mostly just doesn’t say anything.

“Thank you, Pennyworth,” he says returning the phone to him. “You excel in your duties.”

Pennyworth shakes his head a little and chuckles. “It’s always my pleasure to help out a member of the family.”

    Damian tilts his head up a little proudly at that. At least Pennyworth acknowledges he’s part of Father’s family, even if Father seemed reticent to. Of course, he’d trade Father’s approval for Pennyworth’s ten times over. But it’s a start.

 

***

 

Damian doesn’t go back to bed. He can’t. It’s not as though the dream scared him off - well, it _didn’t_ \- he just knows there’s just no point in wasting time. If his father is up at this hour, he can be as well. So, he trains again, and thinks of what to do about Drake.

    He doesn’t trust his rival.

    Despite everything Father’s said, he’s _painfully_ aware of the fact that Drake is his rival. He wishes the other boy would just come out and say it, though. This friendly act is obviously trying to get him to lower his guard. He doesn’t know how to react to that. He’d prefer Drake just throw a knife at him, like Mara did. That way, he’d know how to respond. And he could prove to himself that he had nothing to worry about - that he was stronger and that stupid dream was just the signs of an overactive imagination.

    When breakfast rolls around, Damian’s stuck at the table with him again, and Drake is showing Father the drawings he worked on last night. His own, not Damian’s - Damian hadn’t permitted Drake to see what he was working on. Art is rest for the soul. That’s what Ravi had said. And Damian has no intention baring his soul for someone who’s probably trying to get him to let his guard down so he can stab him in the back.

    Drake is saying that Father should hang up his picture on the fridge - a ritual Damian has no clue what means, but seems to amuse Pennyworth. _Inane_.

    In the middle of whatever other conversation Drake and Father are partaking in that Damian doesn’t understand, Drake’s pocket makes a dinging noise, and he takes out a cellular phone.

    “Is Cassandra checking in?” Father asks.

    Drake starts messing around on his phone. “Nah, it’s Babs’s Bruce Wayne app - you know, the one she made to track mention of you in the news, after that whole murder accusation thing?”

    “Murder accusation?” Damian asks.

    Father raises a hand to Damian, palm open, indicating that he should hold his questions. “It’s passed,” he says.

    Damian pouts. Again, he’s being treated like an outsider in what _should_ be his own home.

    “Oh, man,” Drake says, staring at his phone stupidly.

    Damian yanks the device away from him.

    “ _Hey_!” Drake says in a grating, whiny tone.

    Drake’s phone is opened to some site that has a _Persons_ title and a big headline reading BRUCE WAYNE’S BASTARD SON in all caps. There’s a photo of himself walking to the car with Father there.

    “This is hardly accurate,” Damian says. “I’m not a _bastard_.”

    Drake attempts to steal his phone back, but Damian steps out of his arms reach. “I’m pretty sure you are, in _both_ meanings of the term. Give me that back.”

    “Dare I ask what’s going on?” Pennyworth asks from his spot at the table.

    “It’s some gossip site,” Drake says. “Just… rumor mill going on. Probably his fault.” He jerks a thumb in Damian’s direction.

    Father is rubbing his face, and Damian’s getting the idea that whatever he says next isn’t going to be happy.

    “It’s not my fault my parents had better things to do than get some meaningless legal document,” Damian says. “Mother said - ”

    “I stayed out til four last night,” Father says, “So I’m a little slow on the uptake. What’s going on?”

    “We _both_ stayed up til four,” Drake says.

    Damian looks between Drake and Father so fast he might have given himself whiplash. “You took _Drake_ with you but not me?!”

    “ _Tim_ ,” Father says, putting an annoying amount of emphasis on his rival’s first name, “has training you don’t have Damian. And - ”

    Damian can’t help but cut him off. “That’s ridiculous, Father! There’s no way that _child_ has access to more training than I do!”

    “Give me my phone back, you little demon!” Drake snaps.

    Damian is about to spitefully chuck it at the floor before he sees Father’s growing expression of anger. He sets it down on the table, and Drake snatches it up the instant his hand leaves.

    “Tim is seven years older than you,” Father says. “He’s been Robin for five of those.”

    “That’s nothing! I’ve been training for _way_ more than five years!” Damian protests.

    Father stands up suddenly. He presses his hands down on the table and Damian’s half wondering if interrupting him twice in the same conversation was going too far. Grandfather would never permit it.

    “Tim, leave for school,” Father says.

    “What? But I didn’t _do_ anything!” Drake protests whinily. In a whiny tone of voice.

    Father glowers at him and Drake slinks out of the room.

    “Alfred,” Father says to his servant. “Can you drive Tim to school?”

    “Of course, Master Bruce,” Pennyworth says. Then he looks at Damian. He’s giving him some kind of sidelong glance and Damian can’t tell what he’s thinking, but Damian is glad when he leaves the room.

    Damian resists the temptation to fidget or look away. It’d just make him look weak.

    “Damian, sit down,” Father says, gesturing to a chair.

    Damian obeys.

    Father gets down on one knee, so he’s a little lower than Damian and Damian’s looking down at him. It seems weird.

    Father reaches a hand towards Damian’s shoulder and squeezes it.

    “... What are you _doing_?” Damian asks, more baffled than anything. It half reminds him of Mother after his first mission - she wasn’t there to bid him good luck when he left, she was too busy, or Grandfather had sent her out on her own mission, or something. But when he came back, she was there, all kneeling down with a handkerchief in her hand and cleaning blood off his face, looking not really proud, like he expected, but more of just tired or sad.

    “I’m…” Father looks down at himself, like he’s not sure. “I have some questions for you, Damian.”

    “Of course.”

    “How _long_ have you been training with the League of Shadows?” Father asks carefully.

    “Since infancy,” Damian says, “So five years longer D - Tim. That’s twice as long!”

    Father moves his thumb in a circle on Damian’s shoulder, like he’s trying to comfort him, though Damian can’t possibly fathom _why_.

    Father squeezes his eyes shut, and if it made _sense_ for the situation, Damian would say he’s bracing himself against some type of physical pain. Father stands up as he slowly exhales.

    “You’re freaking out,” Damian finally figures out.

    “I’m _not_ freaking out,” Father says, but his voice is tight. Lower, but not in the way he made it when he was being Batman. More hoarse than growly, like he’s going to cry.

    Damian has this temptation, this _need_ to spare Father the embarrassment of whatever’s happening and leave the room. It’s certainly what he hoped Father would do if he was ever… freaking out like this. Or about to cry.

    “You didn’t have a normal childhood at all?” Father asks.

    Damian shrugs. “I’m the heir to Ra’s Al Ghul. Grandfather doesn’t need normal children. He needs someone exceptional.”

    Father reaches a hand towards Damian but stops. He seems stuck there, paralyzed by indecision. Does he want to hold his shoulder again? Shake his hand? Hug him?

    “Now that you know how much more prepared I am than Tim, can I come with you while you’re Batman?” Damian blurts out.

    Father’s eyes widen slightly. “Is _that_ what you’re so concerned about, Damian?”

    “Yes,” Damian says. Not really because he thinks Father _needs_ his help - Mother made it sound like he did well by himself. But he’d certainly be better there than _Drake_ . Why is Father so much more willing to acknowledge _him_  - both as Bruce Wayne and as Batman - than he is Damian? He’s treating Damian like an afterthought - like he _should_ be treating Drake!

    Father rubs his face. As he does, he winds up pulling down at the bags under his eyes. Earlier, Damian had thought he looked old, but now he just looks very, very tired.

    “Maybe,” Father says. “Once I’ve got everything sorted and know what you can do, maybe I’ll let you into the field so you can use the skills you learned in the League to fight crime.”

There were so many conditionals in that sentence that Damian isn’t sure Father’s ever going to let him come with him. The cruel version of him in his dream comes up again. _Good for playing with paints and eating cookies but nothing else._

“But until then,” Father says, “I want you to just enjoy being ten. Alfred got you a _lot_ of stuff yesterday.”

Of course. Father must have viewed Damian’s shopping list as an admission of childhood frivolity - just like Damian’s subconscious had anticipated.

As Damian’s mentally reviewing his conversation the other day to see where he went wrong, Father takes another step towards him. He has his jaw clenched a little.

“Is something wrong, Father?” Damian asks.

“No,” he says, “I just realized… I’ve never hugged my son. Can I hug you?”

    Damian hesitates. This should be good - Father called him his _son_. Progress. But something still feels very, very wrong.

    Eventually, though, Damian nods.

    Father kneels down, and Damian lets Father come to him so he doesn’t look desperate. He still remembers the lectures Grandfather gave Mother when he turned three. He said she was babying him and he was turning out too clingy. He doesn’t want to look clingy in front of Father.

    Father hugs Damian very tight and close to his chest, and Damian lets himself take in all the warmth. He attempts to disengage after a couple seconds, but Father’s still holding him in a practically iron grip.

    “Don’t worry, Father,” Damian assures him. “Once you know what I can do, you won’t have to worry about me or treat me like a kid. I'm a living weapon."

That's what Grandfather had said. The most valuable weapon in his arsenal.

    Something wet and warm hits Damian’s forehead from Father’s cheek. A tear.

“Father, why are you crying?”

But Father doesn’t answer.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a pretty heavy chapter to write.
> 
> Random thoughts, in no particular order:
> 
> At first, Damian's dream sequence was a regular flashback, but then I remembered that in canon his dreams are often confusing or surreal and not just memories. So I edited it a lot. I've still got the flashback somewhere, though.
> 
> Also, part of the purpose of this chapter was because I felt like Damian hadn't gotten any interactions with Alfred and it made me sad.
> 
> And on a final note: " (he) protests whinily. In a whiny tone of voice" is the best dialogue tag I have ever written.
> 
> EDIT: edited the last line of dialogue Damian said to Bruce. Evidently it was an unintentional Jason reference at first, which is cool, but I felt like from a writing standpoint it was weird to come out of the blue, since it makes it really unclear what Bruce is reacting to. I wanted Bruce's reaction to clearly be to the way Damian was raised and thought of himself.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Batman resolves to track down Talia and the League of Shadows after seeing how they raised Damian.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a kind of short chapter, but necessary for the next one.
> 
> You can also tell this is where the main plot starts to diverge from the comic version of Batman and Son.

Batman tries to keep Damian company during the morning.

    It’s not like he had to go to the office - he was telling the truth when he said his position was more advisoral than integral to the day-to-day affairs of Wayne Enterprises. And the conversation this morning concerned him enough that he wants to stay with Damian a while, rather than going straight to the Batcave to start his usual mulling over information and crime-watching.

    But when he tried to get Damian to sit down and draw with him, like he did with Tim the other night, the kid refused. He really doubts that Damian’s warmed up more to Tim - at least, his outburst at the breakfast table makes him think not - so he has no clue why Damian would’ve rather spent last night with Tim than this morning with him, unless something changed.

    Eventually, Batman gives up and leaves Damian alone, since he clearly wants to be. He decides to keep Alfred company. Alfred is reading a novel in the kitchen with a cup of tea in his hand, and Batman asks permission to join him. After he gets it, he sits down and pours himself his own cup of tea. He wants to start talking about Damian immediately, asking Alfred what he should do, but he can’t really get the words out. Besides, articulating what just happened would make it real. His son had been brutalized and indoctrinated into the League of Shadows since birth, and the woman he loved helped do it.

    “Do you remember,” Alfred asks him, “When you first told me you wanted to travel the world to learn how to fulfill your promise to your parents?”

    Batman frowns in confusion. He has no idea where this is going. “Of course I remember, Alfred.”

    “I disapproved. You were not yet fifteen. I wanted you to stay here, where I could look out for you.”

    Batman waits.

    “But it was important for you to do. To process things, to take control over what was happening to you.”

    Batman’s pretty sure he knows where this is going now, but he doesn’t interrupt. Alfred obviously needs to talk about it.

    Alfred looks down at his tea. “You said it felt like the world was broken and things wouldn’t ever get better. But now you have a _new_ family, three sons, Cassandra, allies who look up to you. I know you’re concerned about Damian, it sounds like his childhood was dreadful, but there’s no reason things can’t get better for him as well.”

    “It’s not the same,” Batman says. “There’s a difference between one tragedy and an entire life of being raised as an assassin. And - ” he stops himself from continuing.

    Alfred doesn’t say anything, though. He’s waiting, like he knows he needs to say this.

    “God, Alfred, if the worst night of my life nearly destroyed me, what would _ten years_ do to Damian?”

    Alfred puts a hand on Batman’s and squeezes it gently. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know that either of us can imagine it. But I do know that young boy’s life is far from over. He’s here, with us, he’s safe. This isn’t the end of the story - it’s the beginning of it.”

    Batman sighs. That’s not the first time Alfred’s told him that. This time, though, he knows what he has to do.

    He has to find Talia and make sure she won’t come back for Damian - whether she’ll just back off at his request or he’ll need to take her in, he doesn’t know. He also doesn’t know if Damian will _stay_ if Batman comes into contact with his mother. Logically, he’d feel more loyalty to her. She did raise him for the first ten years of his life.

    And to find Talia, he has to go to the Batcave. He starts his day like he usually does, checking messages with his many contacts or programs that scan for potential threats, keeping an eye open for anything indicative of League of Shadows activity.

    One hit concerns him - not League of Shadows, just general worry. Messages from the British military to a platform in the mediterranean sea, not far from Gibraltar. Seems to be responding to some type of aborted SOS. They’re saying to expect them, that someone’s coming to make sure everything’s okay.

    If there’s already a response, Batman doesn’t want to concern himself with it. It’d take hours to cross the Atlantic, unless he busted out his rocket, and he has to prioritize. Figure out what’s going on both to keep Gotham safe - and Damian.

    After a couple hours of check in with Talia’s hold hangouts and planning tonight’s patrol route, Batman finally gets a hit for something relevant. The hit is from a program Batman convinced Oracle to make for him, one that surveyed some networks between colleges and universities, just because often the first hint of trouble didn’t come from any obvious sources, but specialists being assassinated -  it’s hardly the first time that’s happened while dealing with the Al Ghuls.

    Batman opens up the message. There’s a fax of a handwritten document in a language he doesn’t understand - but does recognize. The one his archaeologists found years ago, the one that Talia had told him was in the language of the city Ra’s Al Ghul razed to the ground - whether it was his native language or not, Batman never got.

    Batman quickly scans over the fax, comparing the same of the letters and words to what he saw years ago. The program that scans communications is pretty much pattern recognition - not impossible to fool or mess up. It could have misidentified the language but - he sighs, it didn’t.

    As he verifies it, a heavy feeling settles in his stomach. There’s no way this is a coincidence - Damian appearing at his door, and some more of Ra’s Al Ghul’s history peaking up into the light of day.

    For a brief moment, he contemplates asking Damian to read the paper, before realizing Ra’s would never have taught the boy the language. He killed his friend of 500 years just for writing it down.

    The rest of the message is a request for translation. Nothing surprising, given the contents.

    Still, Batman checks the origin of the message. If there’s evidence of Ra’s Al Ghul’s past, whoever has it it is in danger in - University of Cairo?

    Another place that’s too close to a coincidence for him, considering that’s where Talia studied medicine. He asks Oracle if she can get any more communications from the professor who sent it - Dr. Bousaid - or security camera footage around the college.

    Batman sighs and rubs his face. He hates conducting investigations from halfway around the world.

    Oracle comes through for him, though. She sends him one photo, dated today, 8:47 p.m. in Egypt (so 2:47 p.m. from where he is). There’s a man in the photo, and he seems to be sniffing around the professor’s office. He’s tall and lean and has exceedingly pale skin and long white hair. He’s wearing green sunglasses and a white suit.

    “Who are they?” Oracle asks from her end of the phone.

    “I don’t know,” Batman says, and he frowns, because he thought he was familiar with a large portion of Ra’s’ League - assuming this man is with the League. But when he asks Oracle to check with the student body or faculty, she says he doesn’t belong on campus.

“What else do you have?” he asks.

    Oracle sends him the next picture, dated two hours later: 11:03 p.m. in Egypt. This time, he recognizes the subject immediately - Talia Al Ghul. She’s wearing a simple, all black suit, and her long brown hair is tied back in a bun. A much more reserved look than she normally has, like she’s trying to blend in.

    “Why’s she two hours behind the first one?” Batman asks.

    “You know her better than I do,” Oracle says.

    True. The rest of the league could have forgotten something - or she could have been coming over to eliminate witnesses. He tries to check by calling the office, but by now, it’s almost midnight for Dr. Bousaid. No one answers.

    “I can get an operative in that area,” Oracle says when he switches back to the line she was on.

    Batman frowns. He _knows_ Oracle vets her operatives - they’re probably all very good, and he’s fought besides some of them, like Black Canary, long enough for them to have saved his life. But this is an Al Ghul problem. He’s the one who knows most about them - he thinks. And more importantly, he wants to deal with this himself. It’s now a _family_ problem.

    He tells her to have the operative on the professor anyway, though. He can’t be everywhere at once, and the professor is probably in danger.

Then, he starts with the evening’s training and gets ready to go on patrol.    


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damian runs away to prove himself, and it's up to Batman and Robin to find him before he becomes a victim of Gotham's nightlife - or Gotham's nightlife becomes a victim of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I got too excited to wait till tomorrow, so here's next chapter.
> 
> content warning: a little more violence here.

Tim wants to be surprised, but he’s not.

    That evening, Damian is gone.

    Bruce checked all over the house, Tim checked the Batcave, Alfred checked the yard. There’s not a sign of him.

    Finally, Tim winds up reviewing the security footage of the manor, where Damian was during the day. Sometime before Bruce went to the cave, Damian had popped up around the clock entrance. The little demon was sneaking around, breaking into the Batcave! And when he got in the Batcave, he broke into Batman’s safe, which should be impossible - Bruce said it was voice-locked. Tim has _got_ to tell Bruce to update security.

    Tim shows Bruce the tapes, and Bruce sighs heavily. He doesn’t _sound_ surprised, only annoyed. “I should have put a tracker on his weapons,” he says. “I think they’re a sort of… security blanket.”

    “It’s not funny,” Tim says.

    “I wasn’t joking. Look, Tim, I’m going to go look for Damian - ”

    “I’ll help,” Tim says.

    Bruce pauses slightly.

    Tim can already see his gears turning. “He’s ten,” Tim says. “It’s Gotham; it’s nighttime. Even if he has his weapons, we have to find him before someone dangerous does.”

    Bruce nods. “You’re right,” he says. “We’ll cover more ground if we split up. Are you taking the bike?”

    Tim nods. “Only to the city. Once I get there, it’d be too noisy. I’d scare him off.”

    Bruce orders Tim to stay in contact over comms, and then the two of them are off.

    At first, Tim is wondering if his initial assumption that Damian was in Gotham was misplaced. After all, there is 12 miles of suburbs and woods for him to get lost in between here and Gotham. But he was too obsessed with tagging along with Bruce to do that. He’s probably already waiting for a Batman patrol.

    Unless he doesn’t _know_ Gotham is where Batman operates. Dammit.

    “Just make yourself visible when you get to Gotham,” Tim suggests over comms. “He’ll probably come running right to you.”

    “I’ll try,” Bruce says, though Tim barely hears the words over the wind whipping past him on his bike.

    For a moment, Tim wonders if _he_ seemed as desperate to tag along with Bruce back when he was starting out. Even when Bruce said he wasn’t ready yet or it was too dangerous - he’d still wanted to be in the field, being Robin to his Batman.

    Tim doesn’t like this comparison.

    Tim starts his search near downtown Gotham, and the police station. He figures that if he were a ten-year-old looking for Batman, he’d want to be near people who might ask him for help.

    Of course when he was _actually_ ten and looking for Batman, he was busy analysing reports of witnesses who’d seen Batman and trying to put together his patrol route. But Damian didn’t have the advantage of all of the investigations Tim had done earlier.

    Meanwhile, over comms, Bruce says that he’s going for places he thinks Talia might have let slip to Damian - places they’ve been before. And he’s intentionally not hiding, trying to draw the kid out.

    As he’s patrolling downtown, Tim is just thinking that if something bad happens while they’re out looking for Damian, they’re not going to be able to get there in time. This was Bruce’s prime patrol hour. He _should_ have been going around and protecting civilians, instead of trying to follow around an impatient kid.

    During his search, Tim sees some teenage vandals spray painting a store, who run off the instant they see a superhero, obviously unwilling to engage in a violent confrontation. That’s fine with him. He doesn’t want to beat anyone up over paint. He also stops one mugging while looking for Damian, but pretty much everything is quiet as it can be in Gotham, being this close to the police station.

    The Batsignal turns on.

    “I’m on it,” Tim says, because he _is_ right there, and he’s not sure they can ignore it - it might be important.

    “Found anything yet?” he asks Bruce as he shoots his grappling hook up to the roof of the police station to see what’s going on.

    “ _No_ ,” Bruce says. His voice is strained over comms. Stressed.

    “It’ll be okay,” Tim says. He knows it sounds fake, because he’s not sure how convinced he is himself. But it seems like something you should say.

    Bruce grunts noncommittally.

    Tim lands on the rooftop and “knocks” on the block of cement he’s perched on, to get the attention of whoever turned on the Batsignal. From his silhouette, it looks like Commissioner Gordon - unsurprising. He’s normally the one who deals with bat stuff.

    “Robin,” Commissioner Gordon says. He seems to let out a little sigh of relief as he does.

    Tim walks up to him.

    “Where’s Batman?” he asks. “We’ve got a hostage situation that might turn ugly. Our guy undercover got spotted - now, they’re refusing to deal with any negotiators.”

    “Who’s they?” Tim asks. “Where is this? Who are the hostages?”

    The commissioner sighs and quickly relays the information available - some new supervillain - or super villain wannabe - called the Spook has a building full of people hostage. An undercover cop who was posing as one of his minions to find the hostages got his cover blown. He wants Tim to see if he can’t _stealthily_ rescue the hostages. They’re priority number one, which Tim had already taken as a given.

    Tim’s about to leave, when he grimaces and pauses. “Um, Commissioner…”

    “Yes?”

    He sighs. “Have you seen an angry ten-year-old loitering around the precinct?” He figures with Bruce so worried, and Gotham so dangerous, the more people looking for Damian, the better.

    “Ten-year-old?” the commissioner asks.

    Tim nods. “Kind of olive toned skin, black hair, snobby expression, probably carrying knives.”

    The commissioner pushes his glasses up on his forehead and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Do I want to know what this is about?”

    Tim doesn’t answer. “Just turn on the Batsignal if you see him - please.”

    And before the commissioner can respond, Tim is already shooting his batline off into the distance to start swinging to where the commissioner said the Spook was, because he _really_ can’t afford to lose any more time.

 

***

 

By time Tim gets to the hostages, the situation seems to have resolved itself.

    People are filing out of an old, abandoned warehouse (what _is_ it with Gotham thugs and using warehouses?), some crying, some holding each other. They’re going to a line of Gotham police cars, where the GCPD is helping them to ambulances or taking reports of what happened.

    Tim swings down and lands next to the person who seems to be in charge - a cop he doesn’t recognize who’s directing everyone around. No one pays much attention to him as he lands, though some of the cops give him a nod of recognition, and some of the hostages look relieved.

    “What, you want a ‘well-done’?” the cop who seems in charge says.

    “Uh, what?”

    “Witnesses reported a tiny kid beating people up. I thought it was a Robin.”

“There’s only _one_ Robin,” Tim says. And he thinks _and it sure as hell isn’t Damian_.

But still, it could be worse. The kid could have gotten killed. It seems like he’s even _trying_ to do some good. Against Bruce’s wishes, of course. Bruce just wanted him to stay home.

“Did the witnesses say where the tiny kid went?” Tim asks.

“No,” the cop says. “And we haven’t even finished clearing the crime scene or arresting the Spook, so please stay clear unless you’re going to help.”

“I’ll get the Spook,” Tim says, just because he figures he’d volunteer for the costumed villain. GCPD probably sees enough of them as it is.

Tim sneaks into the warehouse, stopping only once as he gets some of the weird fake ectoplasm the Spook’s guys were using on his boots. He wipes it off on the wall. Gross.

    “Damian,” he says quietly as he approaches the area he _thinks_ the hostages were being kept in. A big empty room with lots of space to manage people, more of Spook’s chains and silly ghost stuff hanging from the ceiling, boxes stacked up against the walls, and…

    Someone lying down in the middle of the floor.

    Tim starts towards them, to see if they’re okay, but as the angle he’s seeing them changes, it becomes obvious something’s wrong with them - they have no head.

    Tim stops in his tracks.

    “Drake,” a voice says behind him. “What are _you_ doing here?”

    As Tim turns, Damian steps out of the shadows from behind a stack of boxes. He’s got the outfit he’d first arrived here on - the white and black League of Shadows uniform - and a severed head in his hands. He’s holding the head down at his side casually, like it’s not even a thing.

    “What the _hell_ is wrong with you?” Tim asks.

    Damian steps forward, seemingly unaware of Tim’s anger. “What do you _mean_ ‘what is wrong with me’? Father _challenged_ me! He wanted to know if I could fight crime. Well I fought it - and crime _lost_.”

    This is insane. There’s no way Bruce approved of this - and half of him thinks that there’s no way this is Bruce’s kid, with how he’s almost _proud_ of what he did.

    “You _killed a man_!” Tim says, as if putting it in words will make Damian understand why something’s wrong.

    “That’s generally what happens when you cut off someone’s head.”

    Tim feels his stomach drop. Everything he’s done up until now - trying to be nice, thinking of the kid like a meaner version of Cass - just seems like stupid naivete.

    “I don’t get why you’re so upset,” Damian says. He sounds almost like a normal kid, genuinely confused about whatever he’s being yelled at for, and Tim _hates_ him for it. He hates how he can act like _Tim_ is the one being unreasonable here. “I was doing what _Father_ does.”

    “No, you weren’t!” Tim says. “We don’t kill!”

    Damian makes some type of sharp clicking noise and shakes his head. Tim has no clue whether Damian believes him about Bruce not killing anyone or not. Part of him is wondering how Bruce couldn’t have told him, the other part of him thinks it’s completely ridiculous that you should _have_ to tell a ten-year-old not to kill people.

    “I think you’re just jealous that I did your job better than you ever will,” Damian says.

    Tim shakes his head. Is Damian trying to turn this into a _rivalry_ thing? When he’s got someone’s head in his hands?

    “If you think murder is acceptable, you’re never going to be able to do _my job_ ,” Tim says. “You’ll be lucky if you don’t go to _jail_.”

    Damian shows his teeth without smiling. He advances on Tim, knees bent and weight evenly distributed between his legs, like a cat getting ready to pounce. That’s where this was all leading, right? He announced his intention to replace him the instant they met.

    Damian suddenly changes his stance and kicks the severed head at him like a soccer ball. Tim catches it instinctively. He’s frozen for half a second - a crucial half a second - by the Spook’s dead, wide-open eyes that just look surprised. While he’s frozen, Damian rushes in and tries to sweep his legs.

Tim shifts back at the last moment to try to get out of the way, make up for his earlier hesitation, but his front foot is still hooked so he hops back a little awkwardly. Unwilling to just throw the Spook’s head on the ground, Tim’s handicapped by the fact that his arms are full. As he’s still regaining his balance, Damian steps forward, knees Tim in the upper thigh, and elbows at his kidney as he tries to get behind him. Tim rolls forward with the blow so he’s far enough away from Damian to set the Spook’s head down and turn around to face him.

    “Why are you _doing_ this? We don’t have to fight!” he asks as there’s a bit of space between them, hoping to snap some sense back into the kid - if he ever had any in the first place.

Rather than answering him, Damian leaps at him with an elbow. Tim sidekicks him as he’s coming in and the kid sprawls across the room and crashes into some of the boxes, but he doesn’t stay down long.

    Either way, it gives Tim an idea. For most of his life, _he’s_ always been the underdog in a fight - in terms of physical size and strength, at least. But he’s at least twice Damian’s weight. All he has to do engage in some liberal “cheating” and he’s pretty sure he can outmuscle the kid without hurting him or hitting him too hard.

    This time, when Damian comes in, Tim dodges a kick to the knee, but steps _inward_ , towards Damian, and grabs him by the upper arm.

Damian makes a noise - in surprise or offense, Tim can’t say - and Tim presses his advantage. He steps forward and tries to sweep Damian’s leg, to take him to the ground where they can grapple, and Tim’s bodyweight and strength will come in handy.

    It doesn’t work. Damian’s too quick. He jerks his leg up as Tim tries to sweep underneath, and while his leg’s up, he kicks Tim in the stomach. The kevlar vest absorbed most of it, though.

Tim refuses to let go. He grabs Damian in a bear-hug so he can wrestle him to the ground -

What - ?

    Tim stumbles backwards.

    Some type of pain rings out from his neck, right above his collar. It almost felt like a punch or a nerve strike, but as his wavers, it twinges again.

    He touches a hand to his neck, and it comes back covered in blood.

    The knives. Never got the kid’s knives… they’d been hidden when the encounter started...

    Tim’s trying, desperately, to keep his bearings, as Damian comes in at him, not bothering to hide his knife at all now. He must know he has the advantage. Tim’s bleeding, badly. It feels like all he can do to stay on his feet.

    Damian advances, looking down at Tim coldly. He punches him in the face.

    Tim’s vision fuzzes out temporarily. It seems to pulse with his own heartbeat. Thinking is getting harder.

    Fight turned for the worse… really fast...

    “Bruce!” Tim says over comms. He knows it’s not the name he’s supposed to use. Doesn’t care.

    Bruce says something in reply, but Tim can’t hear it. He can’t hear anything other than his own heartbeat echoing around his skull.

    Tim finishes stumbling backwards. He hits a box - forcing him to stop his retreat.

    _Ambulances outside, just have to get to them..._

    But he can’t. Tim falls down to his hands and knees. Damian stands above him, proudly brandishing his knife. His hand isn’t shaking even a little, Tim thinks. No hesitation.

    Damian kicks Tim in the face, and he’s thrown back into the boxes. The top one starts wavering unsteadily.   

    _That’s… gonna hurt_.

    Then his vision goes black, and he doesn’t feel anything at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, not sure how controversial this chapter is, since so far the read has been a lot more sympathetic to Damian than the comic Batman and Son.
> 
> My logic is, I don't want to erase the faults that Damian has that are consistent in his Gleason and Tomasi writing, and him being willing to kill people is definitely one of those (especially when he still thinks of himself as a League of Shadow member). It also informs a lot of his interaction with Tim later on, so if I want to keep the same dynamic, I kind of feel like this scene has to happen. 
> 
> I kept this scene from Tim's POV, because I wanted the audience's sympathy to be with Tim for it. Damian's logic for why he wants to kill Tim is perfectly clear in his own internal monologue, and I was worried if it was Damian's POV it'd come across as justifying it.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Batman arrives at the scene of his worst nightmare - Robin, dying - and Batman and Damian learn surprising things about their respective body counts.

Batman makes it across Gotham in record time.

    He had to, after hearing Tim’s message. How injured he sounded - only able to get out one word.  Not enough for Batman to know who was attacking him. Not enough for him to know where he was - if he couldn’t trace the location of the signal, he wouldn’t know how to save Tim at all.

Fortunately, he can. He arrives at a warehouse surrounded by police and ambulances, parks the car, and recklessly rushes inside the warehouse without finding out what’s going on. No one tries to stop him, or even talk to him.

He almost crashes into Damian as he runs through the halls. The kid is holding a bloody knife and a man’s head in his hand.

_No._

“Father,” Damian says, with a slight smile on his face. “I was just about to come looking for you.”

“Where’s Robin?” Batman asks. He needs to know what’s going on with the decapitated man, but Tim could be actively dying, as far as he knows.

“You don’t need him anymore,” Damian says confidently. “You have me.”

And then he tries to hand Batman the head in an incredibly macabre offering. Batman knocks it out of the way and there’s a wet _splack_ as it hits the wall. He stoops down a little and grabs Damian’s shoulders. “ _What did you do?”_ he asks.

Damian is momentarily frozen, eyes widening a little in - confusion? Fear? Batman can’t tell.

 _“Where’s Tim_?” Batman asks, because he doesn’t have time for this. He hates that he doesn’t, that he can’t be concerned about Damian right now, but it’s true. And besides, Damian just killed a man.

“I - He’s dead. I killed him.”

 _No_.

The hallway seems to start to spin around him, and Batman squeezes his eyes shut. Not again. He can’t lose a son again - _two_ sons at once this time, since if Damian really killed Tim, he’s lost as well.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. He can’t afford to lose his head. As he opens his eyes and the world seems to refocus, he realizes just how hard he was squeezing Damian’s shoulders and lets go. Damian hadn’t been reacting at all.

“Where is he?” Batman repeats.

Damian looks up at him, eyes wide, eyebrows slightly up, making some expression Batman can’t recognize in his current state.

“Damian!”  
    Damian shakes his head and seems to clear it. “I’ll show you,” he says, and starts off running.

This was a mistake.

They get to a large open room and Damian points to a pile of boxes and Batman starts frantically digging through them. He pulls out Tim, who’s already paler than death with blood coming from his neck. His breath is coming out in shallow wheezes.

_Thank God._

He really hates thinking that, when Tim’s clearly grievously wounded, but _thank God_ he’s not dead.

He grabs some emergency gauze from his utility belt to stop the bleeding.

“Oh,” Damian says. “I guess he survived.”

His tone is so matter of fact and calm that Batman wants to scream. “But not for lack of trying on your part?”

Damian looks between Batman and Tim slowly. “Let me help,” he says, reaching a hand towards Tim. “My mother taught me some battlefield medicine - ”

Batman grabs Damian’s hand in an iron grip. “Don’t you _dare_ touch him. Ever again.” With that, he shoves Damian’s hand back and the kid takes a step backwards. Damian rubs his wrist.

“Bruce,” Tim says weakly.

Batman smooths back Tim’s hair a little, trying to comfort him. “You’re all right,” he says. “Do you have a spinal cord injury?”

Tim laughs a little, still incredibly weakly.

“I didn’t stab him in the spine,” Damian says.

Bruce glowers at him. The worst part is, he _thinks_ the kid’s trying to be helpful.

“S’okay. can move me…” Tim says, and trails off. Batman bundles him up in his cape and starts to carry him out.

Batman calls the Batmobile to come pick them up around back, because otherwise an incredibly unmasked, blood-covered Damian would be in front of about ten of Gotham’s finest and fifty witnesses. He piles Tim in the backseat, and then realizes that he can’t apply pressure while he’s driving. He puts Damian in the front seat and gets in back with Tim, unwilling to risk leaving Tim alone. Then he puts the car on autopilot home.

As they drive, he grinds his teeth in cold rage and worry.

He calls Alfred and tells him to be ready for surgery, and when they get in the cave, Alfred’s eyes widen in concern as he sees Batman carrying Tim, Damian covered in blood, and then -

Batman can tell the exact moment when Alfred noticed the bloody knife in Damian’s hand. He just says “Oh” and gets this sad expression on his face.

Damian watches intently as Batman helps get Alfred set up for surgery, but Batman never lets him in the actual room. He’s not going to.

It’s only when he can see that Alfred doesn’t need him anymore that he goes back out to finally deal with Damian.

“Why?” he asks finally. He doesn’t bother clarifying what he’s asking the reason for. If Damian doesn’t know -

Well, he’s not sure what he’ll do.

“He was my rival,” Damian says. He’s cleaned the blood off his knife and gotten into a change of clothes and looks deceptively like a normal kid. He _sounds_ that way, too - completely casual voice - though still a little subdued - like he’s explaining something obvious. “It was my right to replace him. That’s how it works in the League.”

_I did everything the other Shadows did - but better._

Of course that entailed killing people. Killing rivals. It’s not as if loyalty or camaraderie would have been encouraged between assassins. The only real loyalty would be to Ra’s Al Ghul and his vision.

How did he not see this coming?

“This was a mistake,” Batman says.

“What was?” Damian asks. “If you’re talking about Drake - ”

    “I’m talking about _you_ ,” Batman says. “Letting you have full run of the place.”

    Damian winces a little in response.

    “I hadn’t realized how dangerous you were.”

    Damian crosses his arms. “I never claimed I wasn’t dangerous.”

He’s right, isn’t he?

This kid has been practically _screaming_ that something’s wrong with him since they met. Proudly announcing his League of Shadows training, not knowing how civilians act, thinking of himself as a weapon…

It shouldn’t take the world’s greatest detective to figure out. It shouldn’t even take the world’s worst. All it would’ve taken was listening and paying attention to what the kid was telling him. But he hadn’t. Batman _wanted_ to ignore it. He _wanted_ to believe he could just turn over a new page and Damian would adjust to life in the manor, despite his clearly nightmarish upbringing. He _wanted_ to believe his ten-year-old son didn’t already have blood on his hands.

Half of him is wondering if when he wakes up, Tim will agree. If he’ll say it was Batman’s fault. After all, wasn’t Batman supposed to _protect_ him? He did a poor job of it.

“Listen, Father,” Damian says. His voice is pitched a little softer, a little gentler than usual, like he’s making a peace offering. “I clearly misread the situation. I won’t try to kill Tim again if it upsets you so much.”

“If it _upsets_ me?” Batman repeats incredulously.

Damian nods.

“Damian, why do you _think_ trying to kill Tim was wrong?”

“Because you obviously view him as a lot more irreplaceable and with more affection than I was imagining…” Damian trails off as he watches Batman’s face.

Unbelievable.

“You don’t _get_ it. You don’t _get_ how it’s wrong,” Batman says. He rubs his face. “What’s more is, I don’t think you even get how it _could_ be wrong!”

“I said I won’t do it again,” Damian repeats, a little sullenly. Like a kid who’s mad he’s still getting lectured.

Jesus Christ, doesn’t this kid have any conscious at all?

“What makes you think I’ll let you _stay_ here long enough to try again?” Batman snaps. He feels like he shouldn’t have said it - he doesn’t have any real intention of letting Damian return to the League of Shadows - but he wants _something_ to get through to this kid.

“The Spook won’t hurt anyone ever again,” Damian says. “I fought crime. I thought that’s what you wanted.” He looks down a little. “Then you’d see… what I can do,” he finishes awkwardly.  

Batman exhales slowly, to not lose his head - again. He doesn’t need his judgement impaired more than it already feels.

“Damian,” he says slowly, “how many people _have_ you killed?” And internally, he thinks: how many _must_ there be to have him seeming to have no reaction to this, other than disappointment that it didn’t turn out how he wanted?

“I’m not sure,” Damian says. “I didn’t keep track. A lot.”

 _A mistake_ , Batman thinks again. He might as well have invited the Head of the Demon himself into his house.

“How many people have you killed, Father?” Damian asks earnestly. It’s the earnestness that gets to Batman - and that he’s looking up at him with those big brown eyes again, hanging on to his every word.

“None,” Batman says.

“Oh.”

‘Oh’ is right, Batman thinks.

“I need to find Talia,” Batman says. “I need to know what the hell it is she did to you.”

“ _Did_ to me?” Damian asks.

Batman just repeats himself. “Yes. What she did to you. She raised you as an assassin!”

Damian jerks his thumb at his chest, as if to point something out. “Because I _am_ an assassin!”

“That’s _exactly_ what I’m talking about!” Batman says, taking a step towards Damian, who tenses a little but doesn’t back away. Batman rubs his face and sighs. He can’t imagine getting anywhere with Damian like this.

    “Just tell me where she is,” Batman says. “Or where she’s _going_. I already know where she was.”

    “You do?” Damian asks.

    Batman hands Damian the security photos he took earlier at the university. Damian makes a disapproving _tt_ noise as he sees them, staring at the man Batman hadn’t recognized earlier.

    “Who is that?” Batman asks, since Damian obviously knows him. As he asks it, Batman watches Damian’s face carefully, trying to find out if he’ll be truthful or not.

    “One of Grandfather’s lackeys,” Damian says. “He’s not important.”

    “Damian,” Batman says.

    Damian sighs. “He likes to call himself the White Ghost. I _genuinely_ don’t know much about him. He and Mother had an argument after I got back.”

    “Got back from _what_?” Batman asks.

    “I mean, after Grandfather died,” Damian says.

    Batman narrows his eyes. There’s no way Damian thinks that fooled him. “What was their argument about?” he asks.

    Damian shrugs. “I didn’t hear much. Something about what Grandfather left behind, so it was probably over who’s in charge of the League.”

    Batman has questions - like why this guy would even think he could be in charge of the League, with Talia and Damian being Ra’s Al Ghul’s only living heirs. In fact, _Damian_ must know something, because he’s sure otherwise the boy would have yelled about how ridiculous it was. Well, at least he _would_ have, an hour or so ago. Damian’s still been acting slightly off since he tried to kill Tim. Batman’s hoping that’s good. Maybe the kid finally realized how badly he messed up - though realistically, it’s just like Damian told him. Damian hadn’t realized he’d messed up at all, he just knew that _Batman_ didn’t want him to kill Tim.

    “Is Talia hunting him down?” Batman asks, thinking of how she was slightly behind the White Ghost in the trail.

    “If she is, she shouldn’t be,” Damian says. “She should just beat him in a fair fight, in front of the entire League, so no one accuses her of being afraid to try.”

    “Look,” Damian says. “You want to find my mother. Let me help!”

    Batman looks down at him skeptically. “ _Help_?”

    “He’s in _Gibraltar_ !” Damian says, holding his hands out palm up like he’s offering something. A desperate note creeps into his voice. “He’s staging his operations out of a platform near _Gibraltar_ . If Mother’s after him, that’s where she’ll be - see, I’m not _useless_!”

    “Hmm.” Batman scratches his chin. He looks away from Damian. He doesn’t want to see how desperate the kid looks, because then he’ll start feeling sorry for him. And he doesn’t _want_ to feel sorry for him. Not right now. Not when he doesn’t know if Tim will pull through.

    “And there’s a League of Shadows base there now?”

    Damian nods. “A base near the garrison. We cleared the place out and killed all the soldiers there.” He watches Batman’s face carefully, seeing how he’ll react. “Then I - I called in an all clear signal. Because I could mimic the commanding officer’s voice.”

    Batman rubs his face. This is ridiculous, he thinks. A series of events that never should have happened.

    “The British military is already on its way there,” Batman says, thinking of the transmission he intercepted earlier today. “If they get there before we do, they’ll blow the entire place out of the water.”

    Taking all of his hopes of finding out what Talia did to Damian, why she did it, with them.

    “There’s no way you can get there before they do,” Damian says.

    Batman shakes his head. “You’ll see,” he says. “You’re coming with me.”

    Damian perks up a little, like this is a reward.

    “Because I can’t _trust_ you alone with anyone, Damian!” Batman says. “This isn’t a good thing!”

    Batman gets Damian armored up in a prototype Robin suit. He’s not thrilled about the idea - he feels like it’s still exactly what Damian wanted, and Batman’s rewarding him for trying to kill Tim. But it is the only kid-sized armor he has, and he’s not sending Damian in without at least some protection.

   Batman has the brief thought that Damian might wind up just re-joining the League when he sees them. He might not have any loyalty to Batman at all. They’ve known each other for all of two days. But he’d rather be with Damian and deal with whatever back-stabbing situations may occur, than leaving it for Tim and Alfred.

    “Damian,” Batman says. “If you’re coming with me, you can’t kill anyone.”

    “That’s not fair!” Damian protests. Then, he seems to get a hold of himself and says more calmly: “The League of Shadows will almost certainly be trying to kill _us_. We’ll be fighting at a huge disadvantage if we hold back on lethal blows.”

    “It’s not _supposed_ to be fair or easy. You’re _supposed_ to do it because it’s right,” Batman says. But then, he reaches over and takes off Damian’s Robin mask. “There. Now they’ll know exactly who you are. They won’t try to kill you. You’ll be safe.”

    At least, he _hopes_ he’ll be safe.

    “You _do_ know that not all League of Shadows members can recognize me by sight, right?” Damian asks. Then, he sighs. “Very well,” he says. “I swear I won’t kill anyone, Father. For you.”

    Again, Batman’s not thrilled with the way Damian phrases the killing as something that would only bother _him_ . But he keeps up with his plan. He doesn’t have time to teach Damian ethics - he doesn’t even know _how_.

Batman gives Damian his sword back from the safe, since Damian had only stolen his belt of knives. As he places the weapon in his son’s hands, he has the thought that he’s making a huge mistake. But if Damian dies because he can’t parry someone’s blow, that will _also_ be a huge mistake on his part. It seems like the only decisions he can make in this situation are mistakes, and he can only pick the _least_ damaging option. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can tell, I'm sort of sewing the ending of Batman and Son to the beginning of Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul. Mostly because I'm not sure the Grant Morrison version of Talia is the version of the character I want to use (I've been dropping subtle hints in the writing, but). 
> 
> I also kept one bit from Batman and Son, which was Damian telling Batman where the LoS/ his mom was. I feel like that's important for establishing how much he craves dad's approval later on. 
> 
> also: The line "Jesus Christ, doesn’t this kid have any conscious at all?" hurt to write TBH :C Well, lots of Batman's judgement hurt to write. 
> 
> Next chapter is Damian's POV, btw. I know we haven't seen him narrate since chapter 6, so we probably miss him.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Batman takes Damian on a trip across the world, Damian has time to reflect on the first person he ever killed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: more blood/injury description/ violence here, especially since we're looking at it through baby Damian's eyes.

Father takes Damian to his rocket and prepares him for the trip to the mediterranean. It’s shouldn’t take long, but it  _ feels  _ like forever to Damian because of how antsy he is.

He knows he messed up. He’s not quite sure how, but Father’s acting like he did. He thought he had it all figured out - he thought Father just was sad because for some reason, Drake was more irreplaceable or important than Damian had anticipated. 

No, that’s not true. Damian knew why Father reacted that way to him trying to kill Drake - the same reason Damian had done it, without being able to articulate it to himself. Father was treating Drake how  _ he  _ wanted to be treated. He was treating him like his son. And with Father having been so upset at it, it’s clear he viewed Drake as his  _ real  _ son, which only made Damian hate the kid more.

Funny, he doesn’t think he’s ever had a reason to be  _ jealous  _ of anyone before. 

There was more though -- Father instead seemed to take objection with the  _ act  _ of killing itself -- an act he’d never partaken in. It seemed as if he’d somehow made it through forty-some years without ever resorting to the surest way to dispatch an enemy that existed.

Not Damian.

Damian can remember with perfect clarity the face of the first man he killed.

Not  _ every  _ person he killed, obviously. There were too many for that, and some of them were his brethren from the League of Shadows on training missions - like the one he finished not three days ago, when Mother fought him. He never even had the opportunity to see their faces.

But the first person he killed - he remembers their face.

He was not yet five. Like many first kills for the League of Shadows, he was supposed to execute a criminal. Someone who’d wronged Grandfather in some way.

However, his job was not just to hold a sword and cut off their head. Instead, Grandfather wanted Damian to find the man and bring his head back. He wanted Damian to prove himself. That all his training would not be in vain.

It wasn’t hard. The man just lived in the next town over. Damian had prepared enough supplies to walk the distance - he had light leather armor under his clothes, a backpack full of , supplies, a first aid kit, a bedroll, and a sword - but on his way over, a woman offered him a ride. She asked if he was lost. Damian said no - he was just going to see his uncle. That’s his cover story, he thought. That he was going to see family. Can you please help me find him?

The woman didn’t bother to ask any questions. After all, who would suspect a four-year-old of being an assassin? Even moreso - who would suspect a four-year-old of lying about this in general? She took Damian to the town and insisted on coming with him to find his uncle. She couldn’t bear to leave a child alone. Damian tried to convince her otherwise - it was no trouble, he’d been this way before. But she would not be deterred.

They found the man’s house, a little outside of town. Damian shifted uncomfortably, now. He knew the man would know something’s wrong. The man would know he didn't have any nephews who look like Damian, he’d maybe even be suspicious that any unexpected visitors were assassins in disguise. He knew he’d angered Ra’s Al Ghul, and now the wrath of the demon was upon him.

The woman knocked on the door. 

The man answered - he was a little old, about fifty, with strong cheekbones, large circular eyes that seemed to jut from their eyesockets, a wide nose, and no hair. He eyed the woman with suspicion, and Damian grabbed the hilt of his sword, prepared to kill the man the instant he had to.

“Hello,” the woman said, “I’m here with your nephew -- ”

The man ran inside. He came back wielding a pitchfork like a weapon, and brandished it at her. “I know why you’re here!” he screamed. “Liar! I won’t go back!”

The woman backed up so quickly she tripped over her own feet and fell down on her butt.

_ He must think  _ she’s  _ the assassin, _ Damian realized.  _ And I’m just a cover story _ .

Damian withdrew his sword quickly. He didn’t have much time during which the man would be distracted. He swung his sword at the man’s knee, the easiest thing in reach.

The sword only embedded itself partly inside his knee with a thick  _ splunk _ sound. The man wheeled on Damian so fast he lost grip of his sword, which was still in the man’s knee.

The woman screamed.

The man started stabbing desperately at where Damian was with his pitchfork. It took all of Damian’s considerable training to avoid it - he jumped back, dirt flew up in his face from where he was not a second ago. The man attacked him, once, twice - 

Damian sprawled on the ground.

His head was ringing. He got clipped by the pitchfork - badly. Blood was dribbling into his eyes from a cut over his browline.

The man was standing above him, pitchfork raised, prepared to bring it down in the kill. The only thing that saved Damian was his sword - the man crumpled on his weakened leg and fell to the ground. 

Damian withdrew his sword painfully and quickly from the man’s knee. The man screamed. Damian backed up and got to his feet, the man started to brace himself with the pitchfork so he could stand up - 

If he does, Damian realized, he’d be dead. The man was too strong, with too long a reach, for Damian to get past his guard. Damian swung his sword at the man again, this time at his neck height. Again, he wasn’t strong enough for the blade to go all the way through. It got stuck at his spine after having sliced through his trachea, esophagus, and blood vessels. Blood sprayed across his face.

The man made a sick gurgling noise. His eyes seemed to bulge out of his face even further. Five years or so later and Damian can still remember them, the smell of blood, and the way the inside of a man’s neck looked  _ nothing  _ like his anatomy books had prepared him for. Everything in the books was so neat, so clearly labelled, as if you could unzip a human being and see how they worked. What was in front of Damian instead was an unrecognizable mess. 

Damian was faintly aware of the woman who drove him here making some type of noise. He wasn’t sure whether she was praying or crying for help or babbling in disbelief. Damian didn’t even believe it. He couldn’t get his hands to let go of his sword, he couldn’t get the sword out of the man’s neck. He was just standing there, embedded in his… victory.

Shadow assassins sprung up from behind the house or bushes and Damian realized he’d never been alone. There had always been someone with him, in case he failed. 

_ Insulting _ , he should have thought. But he still couldn’t remove his sword from the man’s neck. He could, physically, he should have been able to. He’d practiced cutting through  _ lots  _ of materials in training. Wood, hunks of meat, training dummies. But his hands wouldn’t obey him when he tried to force them to withdraw the sword.

Blood had dribbled down his arms and Damian was taken back by the League. He can’t remember letting go of his sword and he can’t remember walking back - maybe he was carried? Nor can he remember what happened to the woman. She stopped making noises, but he never found out if it was because she ran away, calmed down, or was killed by another assassin.

Damian felt cold the entire trip back. He had no clue why. It was summer. It was sweltering. Why did he feel cold?

“I am proud of you,” Grandfather had said while greeting him back at home, with his arms outstretched. “You will surely prove yourself worthy of being my heir.”

Damian basked in the praise and the cold feeling dissipated from his stomach as Grandfather told him how the man was disloyal to the Al Ghul family and how Damian did the right thing, and now everything would be safe. It wasn’t until Mother had arrived back from her mission that things seemed to get weird again.

“Oh, no,” she’d said softly. “Oh, Father…”

She didn’t say much more - she just looked at her father with these sad eyes again and took Damian to his quarters and started cleaning his face with a handkerchief and sewing up his wound.

It’s petty, and it’s the worst thing he can think of with how everyone is acting right now, but deep down where he doesn’t have to say it out loud, Damian wishes that Father would do the same for him. He wishes he’d grab his shoulder and hug him again, like he did that morning at breakfast, so Damian wouldn’t have to be waiting for his wrath. 

But it seems that rage is the only thing Father has for Damian right now, because all he’s done is yell at him or tense in a way that makes Damian think Father’s intending on fighting him. It shouldn’t even bother him - being yelled at. Yet it does. It’s so much worse than when Grandfather tells him that he failed, because at least then Damian knows how to fix it - all he has to do is try again and succeed. In fact, he doesn’t know if he’s ever  _ consistently  _ failed at something Grandfather gave him to do. He doesn’t know if he’d have been allowed to.

Either way, it means he has no clue how to salvage the situation with Father. Father seemed completely unwilling to use him as a weapon and heir, like Grandfather did. At first, Damian assumed that Father merely believed he couldn’t do it. Now… 

Now, he’s not sure if Father would ever have a use for him. A reason to love him. 

Damian shuts his eyes as the rocket decelerates over the base near Gibraltar. Maybe, when they see Mother, she can explain it. Why Father seemed to operate on such a different level than everyone he knew.  Then, things will make sense again… 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, some chapter notes.
> 
> Since I didn't get to do my flashback in chapter 6, like I planned, I put one here (it's a different flashback, but it would have felt too same-y if I used 6's intended flashback, since I heavily based the dream off it). 
> 
> I'm a little torn on this chapter because I'm not sure if it gives the audience a necessary breather before what's coming next, or if it just slows down the action. So, you'll have to tell me how it worked. 
> 
> I also don't know who the first person Damian killed in canon was. If I could've found something, I would've aligned it with canon, but I couldn't get anything. I've heard someone say he went on his first mission when he was three (?) but haven't actually seen any of that in canon yet. 
> 
> The guy he killed being an execution of someone Ra's said was a criminal was inspired by Batman Begins, since that's how it seemed like Ra's wanted to wean Bruce into killing people.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Batman tries to confront Talia about how she raised their son.

On the ride over, Batman briefs Damian on what will be happening. They dive at 25,000 feet up and their chutes will open at 1,000. He’s going to have Damian dive with him, in a tandem dive - he’s not letting the kid do a solo HALO jump. Damian protests weakly - insisting he’s already done it - but not a whole ton. Ever since Batman scolded him for trying to kill Tim, the kid hasn’t been that argumentative.

As they approach the base near Gibraltar, Batman ejects them from the rocket. For his part, the kid gets in proper position immediately - arms and legs out with his knees bent. Batman can’t give any orders as they’re falling, because of the wind whipping by them deafeningly. Batman is thankful for it. Not being able to talk gives him time to _think_ . Think of what he’s going to say to Talia. Ask her what happened - not why she lied to him about losing the baby, he’s gotten over that, or at the very least, it seems so incredibly inconsequential compared to everything else going on. But why she raised their son as an _assassin_ . He thought she hated assassin’s work. Thought she’d - thought she’d want to be a _better_ mother to her child than Ra’s Al Ghul was to her.

    And, way too late, as they’re diving down, he realizes he didn’t come here for Damian. If he really wanted to do what was best for Damian, he would’ve kept him at the mansion and stayed home and never, ever sent the kid who’d already killed too many people to remember into battle again.

    No, he tracked down Talia and the League of Shadows are for _him_. He wants answers. He wants to find out how this could have happened and if there’s still anything left of the woman he once loved.

    The realization doesn’t do him any good, though. It’s too late to go back now - way too late. Another decision that is only a mistake.

Batman opens the chute as they get closer, and now the _real_ hard part begins.

    Earlier, they were falling too fast for anyone to shoot them down. Now, if there are assassins on the ground, watching them, they could shoot them the instant they decel enough. Or just cut the cords to the chute. Either way would leave them just as dead.

    Batman is regretting the fact that tandem diving means Damian is in front of him. The prototype Robin gear is bullet resistant, but not bullet-proof.

    The platform grows larger, and Batman sees Shadows the size of ants scattered across the platform - about five of them, growing quickly in size. Some of them turn up and start to take aim at them. Batman risks pulling the cords in on the chute to make them fall faster, and figures he can just finish the deceleration with a batline -

    Shit.

    He didn’t even _notice_  a cord got cut by a bullet until they were already spiralling out of control. He wraps one arm around Damian, even though the harness already had him, and yanks the reserve chute’s cord.

It slows them down some, but not enough. He gets out a batarang that should shoot out some of Green Arrow’s patented red foam and throws it to the ground right before they hit. He bends his knees and keeps his muscles loose to protect against injury, but most importantly, angles himself back a little, so if he falls over, it’s not on Damian. As he’s doing this, he notices the kid starting to reach for the harness, as if to unbuckle it -

    In less than an instant, they’re on the ground. As they hit hard, Damian is thrown from the impact. Batman can’t see if he landed in any controlled manner or not - but certainly his son’s doing better than he is, since he finds himself about a foot deep in the goo around his legs and six inches at his back, where he’d finished falling. He’s stuck. Helpless. Even his arms are trapped in it.

    Four of the assassins start to make a semi circle around him, approaching him slowly - two with guns and two with swords. The fifth assassin - Batman doesn’t see where he is, his vantage point is all wrong, but he assumes he’s going after Damian.

    There’s a _thunk thunk_ of two knives hitting flesh, and Batman can see the final assassin as they stumble forwards into his field of view. He has one knife in his forearm and the other in his stomach - nothing _immediately_ lethal, Batman thinks with a small sigh of relief. Then, a small ball of red rushes up at the assassin and kicks him in the back. The assassin makes a _hurk_ noise as one of the knives is driven even deeper into his stomach when he hits the ground.

    The other assassins all turn on Damian. Damian doesn’t bother staying still long enough for them to see his face - he throws a knife at the hands of one of the gun-wielders, and a bullet goes off.

    Batman starts trying to struggle free.

    There’s a harsh swish of a sword through air, blood splatters, and an assassin’s head falls on the ground and rolls straight up to Batman.

    _No._

    Batman works his arms back and forth, trying to get the spikes on his forearm guards to cut through the goo, but it’d been too much of a last-ditch measure. It wasn’t actually _designed_ for cushioning falls, it was designed for restraining enemies. And he is restrained.

    There’s yet another sound of knives rending through flesh, and Batman just thinks that it’s gotten all out of control so fast. _How_?

    Damian’s yelling, and Batman cranes his neck up, but it doesn’t look like the boy’s been injured. Instead, he seems to be the only victor of the melee and is sitting on an assassin’s chest and brutally punching his face over and over again with a sick _thwuck_ sound.

    The assassin begs something, and Batman finally finishes wriggling his hand free. He gets a batarang out and starts chopping at the foam around his other hand.

    Damian finally stops beating on the assassin.

    “Damian,” Batman says, hoping to snap some sense back to him.

    Damian looks at him. There’s a note of panic or something in his eyes - Batman can’t tell. But he’s _very_ afraid of whatever Damian will do next. He’s not worried about himself, but he is about everyone else in the place.

    “Damian, I gave you an order!” Batman snaps. Damian had promised he wouldn’t kill anyone. “Why did you do it?”

Damian doesn’t answer. He just yanks his sword out of the gut of one of his victims and runs inside a door leading to the lower levels.

Damn it!

Batman finishes freeing his other hand and gets to work on his foot. As he tries to struggle away, sharp pain goes through his leg. Something’s broken, that’s for sure.

It takes him two minutes to finish freeing himself. Two minutes in which Damian could’ve gotten himself in all kind of trouble.

Batman stands up, haltingly, and tries putting weight on his right leg. Pain jolts up from his heel to his knee, concentrated around his ankle. He’s hoping it’s only a sprain, and he can just ignore it and keep going, but his experience is telling him it hurts too much for that.

Then, there’s a whirl of helicopter blades - coming from the far side of the platform, away from where Damian disappeared to.

Batman turns around. Disembarking from a helicopter are four League of Shadows assassins and Talia Al Ghul. Talia’s in her usual black suit, gun in a holster and sword in her hand. Her head held slightly aloft, confidently, and her long brown hair blows in the breeze.

Batman is half convinced she’s going to try to talk, like she usually does when she sees him, but she charges him with a sword.

_What the hell?_

The charge is way too telegraphed for Talia - there’s no way she could think he’d just stand there and let her run him through, and if she misses it will leave her entire back exposed. He steps to the side and backhands her across the head. She rolls forward with the momentum of the punch, but doesn’t stand up again, as if it knocked her out. Did it?

The other assassins start surrounding him, carefully. He doesn’t let them. He busts out the smoke bombs early on. He needs concealment to his advantage, because with his leg like this, mobility sure isn’t.

He keeps his breathing calm as he fights, to deal with the pain and avoid choking on the smoke. He moves around the outside as the assassins look for him in the smoke. He punches one in the back of the head and they wheel on him, sword rushing through the air to his face, but he’s too close for them to swing it properly. It _thunks_ harmlessly into his chestplate, since they didn’t get enough strength in the blow. He punches them twice - once in each side of the head - and they fall unconscious.

_That_ was the easy part.

The hard part comes now, when the other three assassins have heard the fighting and know where he is. All of them start towards him, two on each side and one in the front.

Batman throws three batarangs, trying to hit each of their hands with the swords. One of them drops theirs, the other two keep hold of them and rush him.

They come at him in tandem, one slashing their sword high and the other low. Batman has no choice to back up, continuing to put them at the advantage - they’re outside his guard, but he’s not outside theirs.

He catches a sword with his gauntlet and yells as it bites through his arm. It was the one that was already damaged from his fight with Damian.

The other assassin takes advantage of this, rushing him. Batman shifts his weight, trying to force the first one to the ground, and takes out a batarang -

He slips.

His injured ankle gives up and he winds up on the ground on one knee. Before he can figure out how he’s going to defend himself, a knife flies through the air and slices the wrist of the assassin whose rushing him. They drop their sword and grab their wrist.

Batman takes advantage of the momentary distraction to punch the other one in the face, but it’s too straight on to knock them out - he just breaks their nose. He rotates his torso towards them and stands up while headbutting them under the chin. Now, they fall to blissful unconsciousness.

The two disarmed assassins - one harmlessly, the other with a bloody wrist - come towards him, each holding newly acquired daggers and murder in their eyes. They _saw_ that with the leg, Batman thinks. They know he’s injured and they know how to exploit it.

Batman waits for them to come to him again. If they’re going to underestimate him, he’s going to make them regret it.

Surely enough, each of them come running at him. Batman decides to take a page from Dick’s playbook - he bends down slightly, preparing to jump, _knowing_ it’s going to hurt like hell when he does.

As they reach him, he jumps, grabs both their heads, and knocks them together. If he were Dick, he’d land gracefully on the ground after this. Being injured and unable to do full splits mid-air, he can’t keep his balance properly and tumbles forward. He turns the tumble into a roll so he can put distance between himself and the assassins, in case any of them maintained consciousness. When he turns and checks, though, he can see they didn’t.

    The smokes clearing, and now he can see Talia, still laying on the ground from where she fell, one hand on a knife, in case she needs to throw another one. “Beloved,” she says, with a slight smile. “Aren’t you going to offer me a hand up?”

Batman frowns. Something’s wrong here. Talia hasn’t normally felt the need to take a dive in front of the Shadows - if she didn’t want to fight him for real, normally she’d just _say_ so. He offers her a hand up.

Talia brushes her legs off and straightens herself out. “It’s good to see you, but we have to be quick. I’m only _slightly_ ahead of the military, and they’re going to blow this place out of the water to assure it doesn’t fall into the hands of the enemy - and _I_ need something we have here.” And then, “How’s Damian? Has he gotten into trouble yet?” she asks with a smile.

How can she act like this is _normal_ ? Like they’re just a regular divorced couple sharing custody and she _didn’t_ turn their ten-year-old son into a killer.

Batman jerks his head towards the scene Damian left behind.

It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, but the fact that he knows a ten-year-old did it makes it feel more gruesome. He’s not just looking at dead and injured assassins - he’s looking at ten years of indoctrination and child abuse.

Talia looks between the scene and Batman a couple times. “You took our son _here_? What’s wrong with you?”

    What’s wrong with _him_?!

    “What’s wrong with _you_ ?” Batman hisses, stepping forwards and grabbing her upper-arm. “Have you even _seen_ the kid you raised? What did you _do_ to him?”

    Talia’s eyes narrow. She grabs Batman’s hand by the ring and pinky fingers and removes it. Not quite a joint-lock, but she’s prepared to use one if she needs to, if he resisted her.

    “I left him with you,” she says, and brusquely starts towards the door.

    “I didn’t mean in the last couple _days --_ ”  

    She whirls. “No, you don’t _understand_ , Bruce! I left him with _you_. I thought he’d be safe!”

    “Don’t you _dare_ act like you care about his safety! You don’t get to do that!”

    Talia’s lip raises and she gets up on the balls of her feet and for a moment, Batman thinks she’s going to attack him - for real this time. But she just tries to yank the door Damian disappeared down open. “It’s blocked,” she says.

    Batman procures some bombs from his utility belt and they both stand back.

    As they’re waiting for the explosion, Talia says, “Please use that renowned brain of yours for once. My father is dead. I’ve taught Damian almost as much as I can. And I’ve assured no one will come looking for him for at least a couple weeks.”

    The bombs go off and the door falls down, and Batman grunts. It’s starting to come together now - he doesn’t think _making sense_ because nothing about this incredibly fucked up situation makes sense. But her dropping Damian off, chasing after the White Ghost, even taking a dive in front of assassins she should have been commanding - something’s going on in the League. Something dangerous.

    “Were you _ever_ coming back for Damian?” Batman asks.

    She avoids answering. “Would you have let me?”

    They turn the corner, and there are two assassins on security detail. “You’re holding me hostage,” Talia whispers to Batman as they approach.

    Batman is sick of this game. But he’s not about to refute Talia’s story, in case this winds up coming back to hurt her or Damian later.

    “I already have your master’s daughter as my prisoner, do you really think you can stop me?” he asks the two assassins.

    They both charge him anyway. Talia jumps out of the way, and Batman throws a batarang with an explosion-timer to a pipe above their heads and engages in the brawl. The batarang goes of, momentarily confusing the assassins and covering the area with steam. In the limited visibility, Talia joins the melee and helps Batman finish dispatching them.

    “Ra’s’ assassins aren’t _stupid_ ,” Batman says. “I couldn’t have even hit them from that angle.”

    Talia smirks a little and raises an eyebrow. “There are two things you should know about men, Beloved. One, that you have enough of a reputation most of them believe you could do anything. And two - that they are always willing to underestimate a woman.”

    Batman narrows his eyes. He doesn’t like her casual banter, acting as if they’re both ten years younger and stupider and as if he hadn’t seen everything that happened with Damian.

    “I won’t let you take Damian back,” Batman says, answering her question from earlier. “When we find him, he’s coming home with me.”

    “And what will happen to me?”

    “You belong in jail.”

He thinks it’s the first time he’s said that to Talia. He doesn’t normally try to arrest her when he has a confrontation with her and Ra’s Al Ghul. She’s saved his life enough times, and her conflict with her father was clear enough, that he could never really bring himself to do it. Now, he wishes he had.

Talia sighs sadly.

“Don’t bother trying to appeal to our past, it’s what got us into this mess in the first place,” Batman says.

“I’m not your enemy, Bruce,” Talia says a little sharply. “I never was.”

Batman scowls.

There’s a loud roar and the platform rocks. Everything falls about five feet as the platform starts sinking.

Talia looks at Batman with wide eyes.

“And that’d be the miliary,” she says. “We _really_ have to find Damian.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, lots of notes for this chapter:
> 
> I wound up writing the confrontation scene with Damian and the other League of Shadows assassins like 3 times (from his perspective, which we'll see next chapter). In one he managed to not kill anyone, in the other he avoided killing the guys at first but lost control of the situation, and in this one: well, you see. Lots of pros and cons for each but I went with this one.
> 
> Talia's characterization has kind of been hinted at until this point in the fanfic, where I was drawing more off pre-Morrison Talia. I'm not sure she fits pre-Morrison Talia exactly because I don't know if there's a way for her to raise her son in the League when she clearly didn't like being in it herself back then. My hope is that I managed to make her not a two dimensional villain yet also didn't try to excuse raising Damian with the League. We'll see how it's read.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Batman struggles for his life, a member of the League of Shadows approaches Damian with a proposition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: slight gore again.

Damian takes in the view as Father and he plummet towards the ground.

If he helps Father when they come into contact with the League, it’s treason. Death has always been the penalty for betraying the League, and Damian would be risking that. The only exception, the only thing Damian can think of that proves that wrong, is the fact that Pennyworth said Mother had saved Father from Grandfather. If she had,  _ maybe  _ he can get away with it.

And if he  _ doesn’t  _ help Father, he’s betraying his blood. He doesn’t deserve to be called his parents’ son. 

In addition to all that, there’s the fact that Father doesn’t want him to kill anyone. Damian had said he wouldn’t, but he’s also smart enough to know that once he starts holding back on killing or maiming blows, it will be harder to manage lots of combatants - he’s not as strong as an adult, he can’t reliably knock someone out by punching them in the head. He might have to hit them multiple times, leaving himself ample time to be surrounded.

_ Compassion for the enemy or safety for me _ ? It shouldn’t even be a debate, but thanks to Father’s quirks, it is. He has about two minutes to decide.

As they fall, Damian can tell they already won’t make it. A bullet slices through the parachute cord and makes their descent less controlled than his was when he was  _ seven _ . And there are heavily armed assassins waiting for them.

Damian figures he’s got one chance to save them.

Father seems to be preparing to protect him, wrapping his arms around him, Damian starts to unbuckle his harness so he can roll and kill some of his momentum and - 

_ Wham _ !

They land, and some  _ crack  _ jolts through Father as Damian is thrown clear. Saved, by the fact that Father was cushioning him. And more importantly -  _ Father  _ is injured, for protecting him.

_ Would you give up your strength for his weakness _ ? 

Damian doesn’t even know where his mother’s voice is coming from, but it’s  _ clear  _ that’s exactly what Father did. 

He grabs a knife from his belt and his sword from his sheath. Time to repay the favor.

One of the shadows approaches him, the others all focused on Father. They must have not seen his face yet, or they’d know they needed way more than  _ one  _ assassin to subdue him. 

Damian grins. Finally, all of the confusion of the last couple hours is gone. He doesn’t have to wonder or worry about what people want, about expectations that seem to change moment to moment. He can just do what he was born to do.

He throws two knives at the assassin and the assassin stumbles away. He runs up at them and lands on their back hard, forcing the knives in their torso in deeper still.

The other four start to turn on him. Two of them are armed with swords, and two with guns.

_ Good _ .

The guns first, Damian thinks, as he takes in an inventory of the assassins after him. He doesn’t wait for them to get their aim - a well placed knife to the hand of one makes them drop their gun, and Damian rushes at the other, drops to the ground as they get a shot off that whizzes straight over his head, rolls forward and sweeps their knees with his leg and slices his sword straight at their neck - 

It isn’t until the spray of blood hits his face that Damian realizes he’s killed them.

No, that’s not right. It isn’t until the spray of blood hits his face that Damian realizes he should have  _ cared _ that he killed them.  He knew it was lethal, he knew they’d die, but that’s how you train: end the fight as quickly as possible. No mercy for your enemies. 

Maybe Father was right to be afraid of him.

He  _ hates  _ the thought and redirects his hate onto the assassins attacking him. He goes after the one with the gun he disarmed first, in case he re-grabs his weapon. The other two - the ones with swords - are following him, not quite able to catch up, and Damian nimbly steps behind the disarmed one to force them to be a shield against their comrades. The assassin attempts to turn around and grapple him - they could easily use their superior strength to get Damian out of his position of cover if Damian allowed them to.

Damian chooses not to allow them to. He kicks the back of one of the assassin’s knees and punches their kidney, before taking out a knife and stabbing there again, just to make  _ sure  _ they’re feeling it. The assassin backs up and wildly elbows at him, and their elbow catches Damian hard enough to send him sprawling backwards. Damian’s mouth hits the metal railing of the platform and he can taste blood.

There are some grunts as Father tries to free himself, and Damian charges the two remaining assassins who haven’t been incapacitated. One of them swings their sword at his neck and Damian ducks down underneath their blow, rolls forward, and stands up while sticking his sword through their gut. He shoves it in straight to the handle and turns on the final combatant.

The final assassin starts backing away from him, and Damian’s too angry to care whether it’s because they’re scared of what he did to their colleagues or they recognize him or some other reason. He charges  _ because  _ they’re backing away. For a moment, they don’t look like an assassin who serves his family. They look like Father, asking him why. They look like Tim, begging for help. They look like the first man he killed as he struggled to stand.

Mother’s voice again:  _ No weakness. No hesitation. No mercy for fools _ . 

Damian yells, leaping at them without any skill whatsoever, and they hesitate, sword half-way up, stuck between surrender and attack. Their loss.

Damian lands on their chest, the two of them fall to the ground - the assassin on their back and Damian on their chest. Damian starts pummeling their face, yelling all the while. Blood from their nose and mouth spray up and hit his face as he’s punching.

“... Lord…” the assassin chokes out.

_ Thwump! Thwump! Thwump! _

The breaking of teeth under his hands.  

“... Lord…” the assassin chokes out again.

All of a sudden, Damian snaps back to reality. He’s on a platform with five assassins - one dead, four possibly dying. Father’s freed his hand enough from the red foam that he can now start chopping it away with a batarang and Damian -

Damian is covered in blood. His gloves are soaked in it, a bit of someone’s broken tooth is sticking through them and into his knuckle. He stands up hastily.

“Damian,” Father says. 

_ This was a mistake. You. Letting you have full run of the place.  _

Damian exhales a harsh, ragged breath.

“Damian, I gave you an order!” Father says. “Why did you do it?”

_ What makes you think I’ll let you stay here long enough to try again? _

Damian looks around the platform, searching for the inevitable reinforcements - assuming the assassins had had enough time to request any. But he doesn’t think they did, and Father’s not in danger, and now he can - 

Now he can -

Damian grabs his sword from the assassin’s guts and runs through the door that leads to the lower levels of the platform. 

He braces the door with his sword, sticking it through the handle. Getting rid of his weapon was  _ stupid _ , but he doesn’t want Father following him. He doesn’t know if he wants to see him ever again yet the  _ only  _ thing he wants is for him to tell him he did well. 

Damian slams his head against the wall, angrily. He’s rewarded for his foolishness with a sharp pain and spinning feeling. For a moment, he looks between the door he barred and the interior of the building, where there are surely more assassins in wait. More League of Shadows members, waiting for him to command them. If he chooses to do so.

It doesn't matter what he chooses, though. Father was intending on returning him to the League anyway - he said as much. The only path open for him is the one Grandfather and Mother have laid before him since birth. 

There’s movement in the hall. Two assassins on security detail, both of them look him up and down when they see him.

“Lord?” one of them asks. “Why are you dressed like  _ that _ ?”

Damian looks down at the Robin suit Father gave him in embarrassment. “Where’s my mother?” he asks.

The assassins look between each other.

“Not here,” one of them says. “But the White Ghost wants to see you. He’s been expecting you.”

Damian clicks his tongue against his teeth. He nods, indicating they should lead the way. As they do, his head stops spinning from the door and he finishes returning to reality. Away from the battle and his father, he can finally regain his senses. 

They escort Damian to a command center filled with security consoles - the same command center Mother had taken him to and asked him use the comms to call off backup a little over two days ago, right before their fight. It feels like a lifetime ago.

Inside the room is a tall, lean man with white hair and pale skin, wearing white clothing and green goggles that obscure his eyes. The White Ghost, known only to family as Dusan Al Ghul - Damian’s uncle Ra’s has always rejected for being unworthy.

“Damian,” Dusan says, gesturing at a chair. “Take a seat.”

Damian looks skeptically between Dusan and the chair. If Mother and Dusan were arguing over who should lead the League, he’s aware of the fact that this could be a hostile takeover attempt on Dusan’s part - if he’s intending on using Damian as a hostage against his mother.

Damian looks at the assassins who brought him here. “Leave us, fools.”

They don’t leave on his command. They wait for Dusan, who nods. Only then do they leave.

Damian frowns. He doesn’t sit down.

“I’m pleased to see you alive and well,” Dusan says. “It seems rumors of your injury were greatly exaggerated.”

Damian looks down at his hand, the cut on it from the assassin’s tooth, which is still embedded in it. That’s the only injury he can  _ think  _ he has at the moment, unless you count the faint taste of blood in his mouth from and a loose tooth or two from the railing collision. But none of those count as injuries in the League, and no one’s had any time to hear about any of them yet, anyway.

“What injury?” he asks skeptically.

Dusan smiles slightly. “Your mother said you were injured in that inane fight you do every year. You’d be spending the next couple weeks recovering.”

Damian’s mouth drops open in offense.

How  _ dare  _ she! How  _ dare  _ she lie! But more importantly - how  _ dare  _ she make him look weak by telling this lie to the rest of the League!

“I take it that isn’t exactly how things happened,” Dusan continues.

“I  _ won  _ that fight!” 

“Good,” Dusan says. “You need to be strong for what’s coming.” 

Damian sighs, suddenly deflated. He’s heard that all his life. He thought things would be different after the Year of Blood and after he met his father. He thought it’d be like winning and he’d get to rest.

_ No rest for the wicked _ , he thinks, even though he’s never thought of himself as wicked before - just willing to do whatever’s necessary, like Mother and Grandfather are. “What  _ is  _ coming?” he asks eventually.

Dusan smiles. 

“Tell me, boy,” Dusan says, and at the use of  _ boy _ , Damian instinctively reaches for where his sword would be, but it’s gone. Barring the door. “Do you care for your Grandfather?”

It’s like Dusan can read his mind and see all of the thoughts he’s been having these past days - not as if he ever contemplated betraying Grandfather or his cause, but something  _ felt _ wrong, deeply, in his dream that was about Grandfather yet wasn’t at the same time. He protests, both for Dusan’s benefit and his own: “Of course I do!  _ My  _ loyalty was never in question!”

“You’d do  _ anything  _ to help him and his cause?”

“You know I would,” Damian says, but this time, he can’t force himself to respond enthusiastically. In his experience, whenever someone tries to get you to agree to something before telling you what it is, it’s something they already know you won’t like. 

Dusan walks back over to the command center’s table, and Damian tries to peak at all of the papers there, but Dusan shoves them into a folder too fast for him to analyze them. All Damian could tell was that they were in a language he didn’t recognize.

Dusan looks to Damian. Behind his green goggles, his expression is inscrutable. “You have a very unique opportunity. You should thank me.”

Damian presses his lips together and tries to hide his general unease. “What do I have the opportunity to do?”

Dusan smiles, showing his teeth. “Why, to help me bring your Grandfather back from the dead, of course.”

Damian exhales. So that’s it then. His grandfather was dead. Not missing, not on another mission - just actual, for real dead, for the first time in over 500 years.

Father would disapprove terribly if Damian helped Dusan, of course. He and Grandfather have been bitter enemies for years, before Damian had even been allowed to hear  _ Batman  _ in more than whispered conversations between Shadows, before Damian had ever known who his father was. 

But Father disapproves of everything he does. Moreover, he seems to disapprove of Damian himself, who he is as a person. He wants him to be soft and childlike and meek and not to kill and one-thousand other things Damian doesn’t think he’s ever been or could ever be. 

Mother would approve, he thinks. After all, the man is her  _ father _ . He raised her from birth. And she’s told Damian a thousand times that you can never get rid of your family. 

Grandfather -

Grandfather would want to be alive. Obviously. He spent five-hundred years cheating death. 

And, Damian thinks, Grandfather would  _ never  _ act like Father did. Grandfather would never try to soften him or act like he’s a child or think he’s too dangerous or disallowed in his house for killing a rival. Every characteristic he has that Father disapproves of, Grandfather approved of, encouraged, all his life. And what was that he always made him say?  _ I am yours _ . Doesn’t he  _ owe  _ it to him to bring him back?

“I’ll help,” Damian says finally, softly. His voice feels heavy and hoarse in his throat, but he doesn’t know why. “I’ll help you bring Grandfather back. I’d be honored to.”

“Of course you will,” Dusan says. 

The entire platform shakes. The room seems to drop five feet at once, and Damian falls to the floor. Dusan scrambles for his folder of whatever, and Damian gets to his feet.

“I thought we called off the backup!” Dusan says.

“Oh, they got suspicious and are coming anyway,” Damian says, remembering what Father told him in the cave.

“And you didn’t  _ tell  _ me until now?!”

“I guess not,” Damian says. Normally, he’d protest harder at Dusan’s tone - point out that he hadn’t even bothered to ask, had been too busy with his plans for Grandfather to do anything but talk to Damian in a honeyed voice that let him knew he wanted something. But he doesn’t. Ever since he agreed to help bring Grandfather back, the world’s felt slightly further away. He doesn’t know why - he hates it. It should feel  _ better _ . 

Dusan opens the doors to the command room and gestures Damian through. Already, the platform is askew and rapidly filling with water. 

“The submarine we took here should still be prepped for emergency evacuation,” Dusan says.

Damian nods dully. As they go towards the sub, Damian spares a thought for Father - surely he’d be evacuating by now, if he already got what he wanted. Mother, he thinks. He wanted to know what Mother  _ did _ to him - he didn’t actually want  _ him _ . 

The water is now knee high for Dusan, and thigh-high for Damian. Walking through it is getting harder, especially with how discombobulated Damian’s feeling.

Damian attempts to shake it off. He’s only felt this out-of-it a couple times before - his first kill, climbing up the mountain with a broken wrist, finding the animal that refused to fight  in that labyrinth in Bialya during the Year of Blood. Some type of vestigial weakness he had that he could never admit to nor reveal in front of his family, lest they believe he’s as worthless as Dusan is. 

The walls branch off to a T. On one side of the hall - the higher side, since the building is horribly sloped now - is his mother and father. On the other side, a whole truckload of Shadows, each of them standing to the side of the hall to where it opens to an emergency door, half buried in water and rapidly sinking. Just above the surface of the water, outside, is the hatch of the submarine. 

“Damian?” Father says.

“Damian!” Mother shouts. She rushes up towards him, but Dusan takes a step forward, coming between them. Behind him, the other Shadows all perk up, each preparing to grab their weapons. 

If it’s a hostile takeover, Damian’s having a hard time figuring out how or why. Bringing back Ra’s Al Ghul wouldn’t put Dusan in charge of the League - things would just be restored to how they used to be.

_ How they  _ should  _ be,  _ Damian tells himself. 

The platform on Father’s side drops down, even below him, and water rushes in from that direction as well. The waves from the sudden change knock Damian off his feet, and one of the assassins grabs him by the armpits, pulling him up. “Sir,” they say.

“Damian, get back here,” Father orders.

Damian thinks it’s so weird that Father’s barking orders at a time like this. Is he going to order the rapidly rising water back as well?

“Don’t stand between me and my son,” Mother says to Dusan, and she steps forward, one of her arms raised, like she’s seriously intending on punching him.

Dusan steps back and allows her to pass.

“You can let go of me,” Damian tells the assassin who steadied him. “I mean - let go of me or I’ll cut off your hands!”   
Harsh, Damian knows. But he can tell he’s losing control. He can tell something’s wrong with him. He’s got to get the terms of battle back in his favor. 

All he needs is… what did Grandfather say? An excellent display of brutality?

Exactly that. In his dream, it had been Father saying it to Drake, but as the memory comes back to him, he knows Grandfather had told it to him. The first sparring demonstration Mother had watched after she’d been allowed in Black Citadel, where Damian nearly took out someone’s knee.

The assassin releases him. Mother reaches him, and grabs him up in her arms. Damian lets her. The water’s at his chest height. He won’t be able to  _ breathe  _ much longer.

Mother’s body turns a little, like she’s panning to see the room, but Damian can’t tell exactly what she’s doing, since he’s facing away from her now - at Father, who’s got a boomerang in his hands. Damian is well aware of how ridiculous he must look - soaking wet, dressed in that silly costume, being held like a child yet still bloody from the fight. 

“Talia, get back here!” Father shouts. He starts forward, and Dusan makes movement with his hand and  _ all  _ of the assassins in the hallway start throwing shurikens at Father.

Father is fighting, possibly for his life - as the water rises around him, it hinders his movements. He can’t get out of the way of everything thrown at him, and soon, one of the blades is going to cut something vital. 

Damian should be helping - either the League or Father, he’s not sure who anymore - but he can’t force himself to move. He still feels cold. Like he did after his first kill. The vestigial weakness again. But he didn’t  _ do  _ anything that could have prompted it. The only thing he did was agree to bring Grandfather back.

Grandfather’s voice:  _ You continue to exist at my sufferance _ .

_ I am yours I am yours I am yours - _

His grandson. His heir. His weapon.  

And while all of this chaos happens, inexplicably, Mother starts walking  _ back  _ towards Father.

Damian wants to tell her that he doesn’t care about the stupid deal anymore, that she doesn’t have to keep letting him see Father because of the terms of their fight. He just wants to go home, though he’s not sure where that is. 

“Talia,” Dusan says with a smile that has no warmth in it at all. “Were you  _ leaving  _ with our  _ hated enemy _ ?”

Three assassins have now lept at Father. He’s being pushed into water that’s now at  _ his  _ chest height, and he and Mother and all of the other adults start floating in the water.

Damian starts treating water, and the salt stings the injuries in his hands. Those are going to get infected, he thinks, if he doesn’t fix them soon.

He starts trying to direct his mother towards the sub. Everyone’s fighting. No one seems to be realizing that if they don’t get inside soon, they’re all going to  _ die _ . 

Mother is looking between Father, the long hallway behind him that’s mostly full of water, the assassins in the room, and the hatch to the sub. One of the shurikens slices across Father’s face and he grunts in pain. 

“I’m sorry,” Mother whispers, though Damian can’t tell if it’s to him or Father or the world in general. Then, she leans back, so she’s in backstroke position, and helps Damian along.

“Talia!” Father shouts. “Damian!” His voice comes out pained, harsh, and Damian’s wondering if Father is injured enough and the terrain is uneven enough that he’s losing the fight.

Talia and Damian barely get out in time - the water level is rising so that the entire room is underwater, Damian barely finished getting enough air in his lungs to make the short swim through the door and to the hatch of the submarine. 

Two Shadows help Dusan, Mother, and Damian to the hatch and practically shove him down face first. Damian lands in the bottom of the dingy sub awkwardly and pain shoots up his wrists. 

Mother climbs down and kneels in front of Damian. She grabs both his shoulders, as she looks up at him desperately.

“Damian,” she says. She smoothes back his hair with one hand briefly before grabbing him by the shoulders again. “Damian, are you all right?”

Damian blinks slowly in response.

“Talia,” Dusan says, as he attempts to enter the sub.

Mother steps back and lets him. She doesn’t stop holding Damian, though - she just grabs him again and wraps him in a hug. Damian barely feels it - he’s still cold, still far away. 

He thought things would feel better once he got back to the League and the world started making more sense. But they don’t.

As they get out of the entry-way, Damian can take in the rest of the sub - still full of assassins. Mother’s grip on Damian tightens - in worry? Is it that they’re Dusan’s men? Their argument was almost certainly for leadership - it must be - otherwise, she’d have no reason to tense at these people who would lay down their lives for them and their family.

“Mother, I have good news,” Damian says, if only because for some reason she seems sad right now, freaked out, and he wants to make her happy. He wants her to be happy and get back to normal so  _ he  _ can remember what normal is.  “The White Ghost has a plan. The League can save your father. They can resurrect Grandfather.”

And besides, he thinks, once Grandfather is resurrected, there won’t be any reason for Mother to worry about Dusan and leadership or anything in the League.

Mother squeezes Damian even tighter still, and whatever he said must not have worked, because she buries her face in the crook of his neck where no one else can see it. Her eyelashes brush his cheek and are wet and thick with tears.

“Mother,” Damian asks in a whisper, low enough pitched that the rest of the Shadows can’t hear it. “Why are you crying?”

But Mother doesn’t respond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second to last chapter of the fic! If you can't tell, I'm pretty much sewing the ending to this and the beginning to Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul together. Even though Damian still didn't feel like the version of Damian I consider canon in Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul, I don't think I'll rewrite that one. I'm not sure what big events I'd change, and just changing the dialogue would be pretty boring. 
> 
> Other decisions: I went with Damian knowing who Dusan is, even though in the Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul comics, it seemed to be a secret. That's because he has to know who Dusan is for the Mara interactions, and I like Mara so I kept that quirk from Rebirth.
> 
> Random trivia: Talia's lines that Damian flashes back to in the fight are from Robin: Son of Batman, which is amazing and you should read if you haven't already!


	13. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Batman reflects on the defeat he had with the League of Shadows.

It’s been 58 hours since Batman fumbled for a rebreather and made it out of the base at Gibraltar, despite his injuries and the assassin’s poison slowly making its way through his body.

    It’s been over 60 hours since Damian tried to kill Tim. Alfred saved his life, and Tim’s almost back to normal - he’ll heal from the blood loss and bruising quickly. Quicker than Batman will heal from his broken ankle, especially with all the stunts he’d pulled before getting it set.

    Batman had arrived back at Wayne Manor by taking a helicopter - the same helicopter Talia had flown in with. It had taken too long - long enough that if he hadn’t had the antipoison to the League of Shadows’ shurikens, he would’ve died.

    On his way over, he called Aquaman. He normally hates bringing in more people, but it was a desperate situation. He couldn’t let the League take Damian. It didn’t help. By time Aquaman got there, the sub was long gone.

    So now, Batman, Tim, and Alfred are all sitting on the porch, drinking morning tea and coffee. It’s quiet, Batman thinks, even though they’d only been with Damian and the usual arguing at the breakfast table for two mornings. Still too quiet.

    “For what it’s worth,” Tim says, “I’m sorry.”

    Batman nods. He feels like he should be the one apologizing to Tim, for not protecting him sooner, but he can’t get the words out. Nearly losing Tim and then losing Damian to the people who indoctrinated him into an assassin is just too much.

    “Do you still have a way to contact Talia?” Alfred asks, a little hopefully. “Maybe she could - ”

    “Talia’s not going to do anything to help us,” Batman says. He can’t keep the bitterness out of his voice.

    He doesn’t know whether Talia was trying to come back to him and take Damian away from the League in the end. The situation was too chaotic, everyone too close to drowning, to tell. But he doesn’t care. It’s too late. Ten years too late.

    He looks down at his tea.

    “You could trace the call,” Alfred suggests.

    Batman shakes his head. “I don’t know how, okay?” It’s true. He doesn’t. The League of Shadows is too chaotic without its leadership, and he doesn’t think they’re reusing any of the bases they used to - he even asked Cassandra to check, while she’s been traking down Shiva. She hasn’t seen anything.

    A gust of wind cuts through, taking the warmth of the tea with it. Batman sighs deeply.

    “We’ll find him,” Alfred says. “We always do.”

    Batman nods without enthusiasm. He knows what Alfred is doing - trying to make him feel better, to rally the troops so they can work properly - but it’s not working.

    Batman’s phone dings, and he can see the Batcomputer got another notification from his surveillance programs. _Two missing ecologists in Australia..._

    He sighs. No time to rest. No time to figure out what he was going to do about Damian. On another case, someone else having the worst day of their life.

    Wait --

    He checks the coordinates of the missing ecologists.

    Suspiciously close to where the ley lines of the earth’s magnetic field overlapped. Where Ra’s put his Lazarus Pits...

    He tries to remember what Alfred said earlier.

This isn’t the end of the story - it’s the beginning of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll try to keep this brief because I'm worried otherwise the notes will be longer than the chapter, but here it is! Finally done.
> 
> It was going to end on last chapter, but I felt like it was too much of a downer note. So we got a bit of an epilogue, where Bruce drinks tea (Because really he was raised by Alfred he's going to drink tea).
> 
> I've been overwhelmed by the positive response this got and I'm glad for everyone who enjoyed it and commented or kudos'd! I had a lot of fun writing it, so I'm glad you had fun reading it!


End file.
